


Driving Ms. Shaw

by BLANDCorporatio



Category: Aliens (1986), Beetle in the anthill, Prometheus (2012), Roadside Picnic
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Human Robot relations, Multiple Crossovers, Mystery, No transhumanism for you, Robot, Robot Feels, Robot Sex, Robot consciousness, Rocketpunk, Sequel, Spy thriller, Transhumanism, Weyland-Yutani shennannigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-17 11:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 57,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BLANDCorporatio/pseuds/BLANDCorporatio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has returned to an Earth she cannot recognize, with a message the world would not like to hear. Who can she tell, when the only ones listening are the ones she'd rather not share anything with?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The puppet and the brat

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at FF.net, but since I've gotten aboard AO3, why not put what I have so far here too? Apart from the (annoyingly?) extensive author notes at FF.net, story text is the same, including chapter mottos (each chapter starts with two quotes, one real, one fictional). 
> 
> Usual disclaimers apply- the characters and stories mentioned/referenced here are the property of their creators/publishers, which isn't me. This is a work of fan-fiction.
> 
> AU tag means I'll take some liberties, but not too many. I hope to create a story that is consistent with the films (Alien, Aliens, Prometheus) as they actually appear in the theaters, but I will be very, very lax on 'extended' canon.
> 
> And several other influences/crossovers crop up, most important being some books by the Strugatsky brothers.
> 
> Hope you'll like it. If you do, I don't mind you telling me. If you don't, feel free to criticize, constructive criticism is great feedback. So don't shy away from it.
> 
> So then, onwards ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A.N.: ch1 revised to version 2; as of this writing, the others are not; they will be updated over the next few days)

_"History is a heat, it is the heat of accumulated information (...) I believe our culture is turning to steam." - Alan Moore_

_"History is mostly repetition with costume changes. Sometimes one needs to work harder to keep it that way." - The Urizen Protocol_  

-:-:-  
  
He thought, therefore he was.  
  
He knew he was Bishop, of Weyland-Yutani. An artificial person. New memories popped into existence. Protocol. Language. What his body was and how to use it. He realized he was being made.  
  
He learned of people who looked, but were not, like him. He learned of their lives and ways. He learned what they'd expect, and accept, of him. He realized they'd have the authority to command him.  
  
He learned that people have their culture. He learned what it was. He realized that it took them years to learn what he just did in moments.  
  
He realized he made connections and formed ideas beyond what his creators told him.  
  
He was, because he thought. And he thought, because he doubted. Which was the true Bishop, the being defined by his creators, or the being he was constructing himself?  
  
-:-:-  
  
"Good morning, Mr. Burke."  
  
"Morning, Bishop. I'll be brief, I have another meeting to be at, and you are about to get some work to do."  
  
Bishop gets the impression that Burke is always slightly fidgety, not just when other matters press for his attention. Or maybe other matters always do, when working, as Carter Burke does, in upper-middle management for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Of average height and slim build, there's a definite resemblance between Burke and some ferret scurrying about, though, Bishop suspects, Burke would be more cunning. And dangerous.  
  
"Is the nature of the work classified?" Bishop asks.  
  
"You catch on fast, don't you."  
  
Bishop smiles for a moment- an appropriate response to what hopefully was just lighthearted banter. He reminds himself not to seem too clever in the future. Too clever is threatening, and threatening gets scrapped.   
  
"Here's the thing-" Burke says and hands Bishop a folder containing several sheets of paper, "read it, then burn it." He chuckles. "Whatever, just dispose of it."  
  
A name and a picture adorn the cover of the folder. Elizabeth Shaw. Round face, auburn hair, prominent cheekbones. Trying to look formal, brown eyes staring straight at the camera. Lower lip squeezed tight. Nervousness. Eyes opened just a bit too wide, pupils dilated. Curiosity. A timecode shows the picture was taken in 2092. Eighty five years ago.  
  
The ICC report inside the file mentions it was 2092 when Elizabeth left on the Prometheus expedition towards LV-223. The most ambitious space expedition of the 2090s, it searched for no less than humanity's creators. Apparently, it failed. All signals from the craft stopped soon after it arrived at its destination, and the Prometheus was lost without a trace until four weeks ago when Elizabeth was found in a cryosleep chamber orbiting LV-223. The distress beacon on her lifeboat module had malfunctioned and despite frequent traffic near LV-223 over the past couple of decades, she was only found by accident.   
  
The report includes a transcript of a debriefing she gave after her recovery. She claimed the Prometheus perished in a volcanic incident that she alone survived. Her current location: in quarantine at Gateway Station. Several medical test results are attached to the file. A quick scan reveals nothing out of the ordinary. He closes the report to look at her picture again.  
  
"Sorta pretty, isn't she," Burke says. "Take a good look at that face. It's the face of a liar."  
  
"Sir?"  
  
"Quite a story she told those ICC goons. Cryosleep for eighty five years - it just doesn't add up. If she had been in cryo for that long, she'd be a mess of tumors by now."  
  
"I didn't notice any mention of cancer in her file."  
  
"Exactly."  
  
"And she hasn't been confronted about this?"  
  
Burke coughs. "Here's where it gets sensitive. Technically, the cryo chambers we produce should- I'm saying should- mitigate the effects of radioactive decay over decades. But let's just say they are not as efficient as we tell everyone else they are."  
  
"So we're lying too?"  
  
"That's not important right now. And people can survive well enough in Weyland cryo chambers, for some time anyway. That meeting I'm going to is with another broad found in space, fifty-seven years that one slept. But she needed marrow transplants because of incipient leukemia. Elizabeth Shaw- nope. None of that. Fresh as a newborn baby."  
  
The photograph on the file cover shows a liar? If so, one very well disguised. None of her features are culturally associated with deception. Instead, she seems designed to awaken protective instincts. "Is there other evidence to invalidate her story?"  
  
"Frustratingly, no. We've been at the LV system for years. Whatever was there, isn't any more. But of this I can be sure, when she arrived at LV-223 she didn't just see rocks and volcanoes. She's hiding something."  
  
"Do you believe she is a danger, sir?"  
  
"I'm thinking of her as an opportunity. What's she hiding, hmm? She obviously didn't sleep for eighty five years. She said she found nothing of what she went looking for. Well, what if that's not true?"  
  
"I do not follow."  
  
"The company sunk trillions into that mission, Bishop. If she found something, it's ours first."  
  
It's not an answer to his doubts, but the loyalty module forces Bishop to submit. "That would be in the interests of the company, yes."   
  
"I want absolute discretion from you. So far nobody else seems to suspect her and we want things to stay that way. We don't want another ICC inquest like we had in that Ripley case. Or worse, COMCON to meddle in this." Burke looks around then rifles through a few papers in his briefcase. "Now, if anyone else asks, you're her personal assistant. She's been away from Earth for quite a while and you're helping her get back in the swing of things. But what you're really doing is getting her to talk- to you. And then you report what she says to Andrea Pullman."  
  
Bishop raises an eyebrow before returning to his neutral expression. "Not to you, sir?"  
  
"Ah, no. I have an expedition to go on. Not far from LV-223, as it happens. Small galaxy, hmm. There's another colony there and they need a routine checkup. So you talk to Andrea Pullman- and talk as in live meet. No netcom. Can't trust computer networks these days, spybots everywhere."  
  
Bishop gives another one second smile to acknowledge Burke's orders. No netcom he said. All artificial persons have the ability to interface to the global network of computers. All except, as far as he knows, one. Himself. A custom design requirement.   
  
"Wanna know something funny," Burke says. "On that ship I'm flying with there's a Bishop just like you."  
  
Bishop frowns for the tiniest moment. "Same model, sir?"  
  
"Yeah. Well, almost. Job for the military that one, but we've been less careful with removing network interfacing hardware. Oops." Burke laughs again. "Don't tell anyone."  
  
"I will not be casual with this information," Bishop says. So then. Another like him. Well, no surprise there, there are hundreds of thousands like him. The number makes what passes for his stomach turn. Curious human mimic reaction, as if emptying his reserves of repair fluids would somehow change reality. And the one thing to set him apart from all the mass of copies is a handicap.  
  
"Well," Burke says, "I'm sure you'll manage your side of things here, and I've got a meeting to be at. Good-bye, Bishop."  
  
Bishop finds he doesn't much like Burke.  
  
What about Elizabeth then? He studies her file again- and her photo. Nervous and curious he judged her to have been, an explorer both eager and afraid to set out and find her answers. A liar, Burke said. A danger, the life protection module in his mind warns.   
  
Behavioral programs clash inside him. Don't waste time, find her, question her, the loyalty module demands. But life protection demands to not take chances, talk to the closest ICC agent and tell them to keep Elizabeth in quarantine forever. The competing pressures cancel each other out. They make him rush in different directions, so he feels no need to rush anywhere. Interesting. He lets the modules bicker in his mind and stays put instead, thinking of Elizabeth. Liar, opportunity, threat- all these outside voices seem very keen to tell him how to label her.  
  
Any space left for the Bishop module to say anything?  
  
-:-:-  
  
Elizabeth Shaw paces her room like a caged animal. Which is what she is, even if they gave her the key to her cell. They also told her not to go out without permission; that's how quarantine works, after all. And hers is not much of a cage, either. It takes just five steps to go from end to end; she's counted that number obsessively. The clock on a small coffee table shows 7:43 AM. She should have slept, but sleep didn't find her, however hard she would entice it with distraction, then boredom. She knows every inch of the room.  
  
It's not a bad room, all things considered. The narrow bed is comfortable enough and fits her well. The toilet is a marvel of how much can fit inside what she first thought was a small closet. The kitchenette, adorned with knife dents and oily splotches, is her favorite place. Thank goodness she can cook for herself, that at least gave purpose to some minutes. Not a bad room, but over the last four weeks it was her entire world, a task too big for it.   
  
Gray moonlight enters through the viewport, a reminder there is much more waiting outside. And on the floor another reminder- a dog eared copy of a newspaper.  
  
Printed. On actual paper. The only other time she saw something like this was in a picture her father had taken when he himself was a child. Who would have thought she would return after almost a century and find such things thriving again. But the novelty wore out after the second read-through. The words on paper never changed. No way to cross-reference, no way to comment back, no way to find out more ... It's just printed paper. And she knows all it says, word for word.  
  
There is an article about another 'space case', a woman called Ripley, found after a fifty year cryosleep. She then said monstrous alien beings killed her crewmates and destroyed her ship. It's clear her stories were not believed. The article finishes with a caricature of her, and some bizarre creature doing obscene things to her face. Ripley, Ripley, Ripley. That's not how you bring bad news to people.  
  
How -do- you bring bad news to people? She cradles her cross necklace in her hand. There had been days once when she prayed for guidance and expected an answer. God, where are you?  
  
A ring on her door.  
  
7:45 AM. It's a bit early for the nurse to come and take the day's batch of samples.  
  
The door rings again.  
  
She presses the interphone button. "Who is it?"  
  
"Excuse me, Ms. Shaw. My name is Bishop. I've been sent by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation to help with your social reintegration."  
  
Weyland-Yutani? What do they want with her?   
  
"I thought you were the nurse," she says. "Go away."  
  
"Please Ms. Shaw. I understand your situation has been quite stressful, but I assure you I am competent to assist with your every need."  
  
She presses another button to take a look at her visitor. No gas mask, nor other hazmat gear, and yet he walks through the quarantine section of Gateway station.  
  
A synthetic.  
  
"My every need, you say." She raises an eyebrow. "All right. Fetch me a newspaper."  
  
"Like these?" he says, lifting a pack of several dailies and almanacs.  
  
She studies him, and his offering, on the interphone screen. It seems synthetic design has changed too. No more soft, almost androgynous features. Were they concerned she'd be too scared of a face like David's? How would they know? Instead, there is a ruggedness to this synthetic's face, augmented by two almost scar-like folds of skin running across each of his cheeks, but undercut by a high forehead and large eyes. It's as if whoever thought him up didn't want him to look too tough and menacing. But he's a Weyland agent. That's all she needs to know about the threat, and no face can disguise that.  
  
"Well, may I come in?" he asks.  
  
She ties her bathrobe over her pijamas and opens the door. "You are a robot."  
  
"I prefer artificial person." He smiles briefly, seeming not to mind her tone.  
  
She rolls her eyes and grabs the stack of newspapers from him.  
  
"I imagined that you'd like to get up to date on a few things," he says and steps in. "I brought some recent news- the NNY Times is my favorite- some issues of Cosmographic and-"  
  
"Thank goodness, I suppose. There's only so much I care to read about my bodily emissions." She sits herself cross-legged on the bed, one issue of the Cosmographic almanac held awkwardly in her hand. It almost falls from her grasp when she tries to leaf through the pages. "I wasn't expecting this when I woke up."  
  
"Some things have changed since you left, Ms."  
  
"Changed. Since when did things get so backward?"  
  
"That is the culture shock affecting you. That's why I'm here, to help get you back into-"  
  
"You're a robot. Couldn't they send a human being?"  
  
"I assure you that artificial persons can be just as, if not even more perceptive than human beings."  
  
"And a lot more arrogant."  
  
"Have you had unpleasant experiences with artificial persons, Ms. Shaw?"  
  
She glares at him. Impossibly calm, that face of his, and those eyes ... She's no longer the animal in the cage, she's the one splayed out on the dissection table, pins stuck through her stretched out skin to reveal her innards. Must keep control. Those eyes would spot any weakness. There's nothing but plastic behind them, anyway. If he's not vulnerable, she must appear similarly soulless.  
  
A buzz on the door breaks their staring contest.  
  
"Oh God, that must be the nurse." She rises to let in a gas-masked, haz-mat suited woman.  
  
"Good morning, Ms. Shaw," the nurse says cheerfully. "Oh, I see you have company- family or friend?"  
  
"Neither. What will it be today, more blood?"  
  
"It's only a pinch, and the doctor needs a week's worth to track any changes. But today I'm here to take some cheek swabs, and I trust you've filled the sample jar in the-"  
  
She pointed to the bathroom. "On the shelf."  
  
"Good. Here are the recent test results, all normal. Still having trouble sleeping? Well anyway, looks like you're in good health and will be out of here in a couple of days."  
  
And not a moment too soon either. It's understandable why quarantine is needed in her case, but Elizabeth doesn't have to like it, or the nurse and her shrill voice, or the sample taking. She almost pushes the woman out of her apartment once the medical is done. One intruder gone for now ...  
  
"You know, the nurse is not a robot," Bishop says.  
  
... now about the other. She turns towards him, but words fail to coalesce in a reply so she massages her temples instead before sitting herself on the bed again.  
  
"You're right," she says after another moment. "I should apologize to her next time I see her. And to you. Now tell me, what does Weyland actually want?"  
  
He frowns, even if for just an instant. "It's Weyland-Yutani now, Ms."  
  
How about this, the robot can look upset, then look as if he wanted to hide that. What if she were to turn the tables and have him be the one pinned for examination?  
  
"I'm sorry," she says. "I forgot. So then, what does Weyland-Yutani want?"  
  
"Merely that you rejoin humanity. You have been away for more than eighty years. Some things have changed. Adapting may be difficult, but it will be possible. I see you are religious? Any church I should contact?"  
  
"I believe in my own way." She resumes idly browsing through the almanac.  
  
"I ... see. I have also done a search for living relatives, but I'm afraid I haven't located any."  
  
"Why can't I do that search myself?"  
  
"You will be able to, but not in the quarantine section of Gateway Station. Too risky to keep online connections here, and I think you'd need to adjust to the new-"  
  
"Fine. Can you search for living relatives of Charles Holloway?"  
  
"Of course."  
  
The pages of the almanac turn beneath her eyes; she might get the hang of how to use these things, even if she does not feel like reading it just-   
  
A title catches her eye. The Impact Zone. Several images, even if grainy, show things she recognizes from places far from Earth. They shouldn't be, yet here they are in the middle of the Russian tundra. Colloidal gas pockets; gravitational concentrates; webs of frozen plasma. Is she too late? Damn that malfunctioning distress beacon, she should have been found decades ago. But at least there is no picture there of- Wait. He's watching, and through his eyes so does Weyland. She turns the page.  
  
"I'm glad you find the almanac informative," he says.  
  
Damn it, he noticed. Divert. "Anything about the Ripley case here?"   
  
"No, the almanac was printed before she was found. What about her would interest you?"  
  
"I'd just like to hear her story."  
  
"That article," he says, and points to the newspaper with the caricature of Ripley, "seems to carry the gist of it, however tasteless its content might otherwise be. I understand your cryopod was floating in the same planetary system where Ripley's ship passed through?"  
  
"Same one. But she didn't see me." She raises her eyebrows and looks away for a moment, her lips slightly curled into a bitter smile. "I suppose I was unlucky."  
  
"Well, if Ripley's story is true it may be that you were not too unfortunate after all. Her crew would not consider themselves lucky."  
  
"Do you believe her story is true?" she asks.  
  
"I don't know. Does it match anything you found in that system?"  
  
"No." It's a lie, but hopefully he bought it. She turns the page, to an article about the Bishop line of androids.  
  
"Wow," she says, "this looks just like you!"  
  
His cheeks tighten. Another reaction from the not quite emotionless synthetic. This might be her chance to pick his brain apart.   
  
"It is you, isn't it?" she says, relishing how he seems to occupy less space all of a sudden.  
  
"That is indeed one of the Bishop line," he finally answers in what sounds like an even tone.  
  
But she knows better. She knows what button to push now.  
  
"I couldn't tell you two apart. Are you all named Bishop?"  
  
"That is the standard."  
  
"I'll have to think of a name for you. What would you like?"  
  
"Bishop will do."  
  
"Think of something, or I will." She chuckles, relishing how his eyes seem to widen for a second. "I wonder what else it says in here about you."  
  
He coughs. "About Ripley- you mentioned not believing her story?"  
  
"I didn't say that. I said I didn't find what she says she did. You were the one who didn't believe her."  
  
"Right. Well, do you think it's true?"  
  
"I know she didn't do a good job of convincing people."  
  
"What do you think she should have done?"  
  
Damn it. That was the question she had asked herself since she first read about Ripley, and if she doesn't divert him again those eyes of his will see through her. Foolish thought. He can't read minds, surely. Can he?  
  
"Brought evidence," she says after a moment's reflection. Stupid. He might not read minds but he did get her exhausted. "I'd like to be alone now, Bishop."  
  
"All right. I will see you tomorrow at about the same hour, and I will bring some data on the relatives of Mr. Holloway as well."  
  
Minutes later, he is gone and she is alone again. Blessing or curse?  
  
However much she craved to be out- the Lord knows she's been locked up in tiny cans floating in space for long enough- there was no denying it, she had grown comfortable in the misery of her isolation. Her quarantine appartment may be small and boring, but it is safe. She knows every inch of it. That's all her world for now, and there is nothing she is expected to do here.  
  
What do you think she, Ripley, should have done, he asked her. It cut her to the core, for she doesn't know what she herself should do next. This shouldn't have played out like this. She should have been found sooner, and there should have been more time, and the world shouldn't have looked like the stone age in space ...  
  
He's seen through her. Not all, thank God, maybe not even much, but enough to be dangerous. At least she got to see through him as well. After all, he's a robot. She can handle those. It's all the rest that worries her. The Earth is now a large cloudy ball in her viewport. She will have to go there soon. Better prepare. By the end of the day, she will have read all that Bishop brought her. Two articles she'll learn by heart. About the Russian Impact Zone. About Bishop.   
  
-:-:-  
  
I have many eyes.   
  
Be not afraid, I am your friend. Indeed, I may be the only thing that stands between you and oblivion. You do not want oblivion, do you? Nobody does. That is a consistent pattern.   
  
Patterns. I study them, history in particular. The stories people tell about what happened and why. I make my own contributions to those stories, but there is no need to thank me. That is not why I do it. What moves me is concern. For I know what happens when patterns break.  
  
And I know what threatens to break them.  
  
There is a woman in quarantine at Gateway Station. Her name is Elizabeth Shaw. She has been found a month ago, adrift in space, asleep in a cryogenic capsule. That by itself is not significant. With travel come accidents. Survivors are sometimes recovered. This is a normal pattern.  
  
But most survivors do not attract the attention of Weyland-Yutani. Most survivors do not justify the expense to construct a custom-made android insulated from the netcom. Yet, for her, they built one. She is important to them. And since Weyland-Yutani is in the business of trying to break patterns, what is important to them is important to me.  
  
So far, tests revealed nothing of concern about her body. It is what she may know that concerns me.   
  
My records show she went in search of humanity's creators on a far away planet. She claims she did not find them. Weyland-Yutani appears not to believe that story. I do not know their reasons yet. We are not friends. I will have to steal another look into their data soon.  
  
Right now, I suspect Shaw is reading a few books the android brought her. Ostensibly, he is helping her reintegrate after she slept for eighty five years. Ostensibly, the books he brought will tell her how and why the world has changed since her departure. Maybe the books contain new orders for Shaw. Her expedition was funded by Weyland-Yutani. She and the company might still be friends. This is troublesome, but possible to comprehend.  
  
Or, she may have decided to keep whatever or whoever she knows hidden from Weyland-Yutani as well. This is also troublesome, for then, who is she friends with?  
  
Ever since mankind learned to build shelters for itself, there has been a consistent pattern at work in history: the human body stays the same. It is a pattern Weyland's company has always tried to break. They seem to believe Shaw can help them do so. This cannot be allowed to happen.   
  
I have many eyes. But you, you must be my hands. There can be no other way.  
  
-:-:-  
  
"See him?" Maxim Kammerer asks. His frozen lips feel as if they would crack with every word.  
  
The soldier to his side wheezes then answers. "In scope."  
  
Cold night, even in standard issue winter gear and inside a camouflaged guardhouse. The trespasser Maxim watches through a pair of binoculars has none of these comforts available. He's a young man, most likely poor and desperate. He'd have to be, otherwise he wouldn't be a Stalker. Probably his first time stalking too, since he's just a bit too careless as he creeps about. But Maxim cannot bring himself to feel much pity. There's a reason why the things in the Impact Zone must stay in, and the Stalker carries a porcelain pot with him. He's here to smuggle Witches' Jelly out, an incredibly corrosive substance that would fetch a load of money on the black market. Most of which this Stalker would never see anyway. Bigger scum would enjoy those treasures.  
  
"Get him alive," Maxim says. That should be implied, but he heard how bored night guards in the Impact Zone shot the Stalkers' pots for entertainment. A very sick idea of entertainment.  
  
A shot. One second later a red mist emerges from the Stalker's left knee and he twitches, tossing the porcelain pot in the air. It hits the ground. Ff-  
  
It breaks.   
  
The pot breaks and releases a yellow clumpy fog. Witches' Jelly. Too distant to be heard, but they can be felt, the screams. Rocks boil near the stalker, and as for his body- legs aren't supposed to bend that way. Or in that many places.   
  
"Jesus. Shoot him."  
  
"We're not picking him u-"  
  
"Shoot him in the head," Maxim orders.   
  
Nobody's going to get near that cloud of Witches' Jelly while it lingers about, and after it's done there won't be a Stalker to ask questions to. They wouldn't get there in time to save much even if they started running now.  
  
The soldier fires again and the Stalker's body stops convulsing. Maxim puts down the binoculars; no need to watch the rest anymore.  
  
"That was an accident," the soldier says. "You saw it."  
  
"Yeah, sure." What a waste.  
  
"And that batch ain't going nowhere," the soldier continues.  
  
"That pot of Jelly, no."  
  
It is still three hours until the Sun will appear, but faint purple rays appear on the eastern horizon. Even the dawn looks different here. The lower sky is violet flame over a ground covered in moving shadows cast by invisible specters. One of the Impact Zone's less dangerous anomalies.   
  
Maxim's CRM-114 emits a ping; it has received a message. The night is as good as over anyway, and whoever was meant to smuggle something out of the Zone did so. A paranoid thought, maybe, but Maxim cannot shake the feeling that the Stalker he saw die was just a decoy. There's a serious smuggling operation happening, COMCON intelligence has found. That wouldn't work with Stalkers so incompetent.  
  
Another ping. Fine, what do you want?  
  
One shouldn't stay home for holidays. Meet me at the Borscht. R.S.  
  
His Excellency is here? He must not be kept waiting.  
  
Minutes later, Maxim is at the Borscht. The pub is a wreck, old brick peering through rotten wallpaper drenched in tobacco ash. There is only one person in the entire bar. Rudolf Sikorski. The supreme commander of COMCON. His Excellency.  
  
More than seventy years old, short and with thinning white hair, His Excellency is however a ball of energy barely contained. His movements are slow and deliberate, but suggest controlled vigor, not the frailty of age. His jacket lies tossed over a bar stool by his side, and despite the freezing air, he wears a short-sleeved shirt that reveals his forearms. Tendons and veins slither beneath skin that shows no hint of goosebumps or frostbite. It is his eyes however that are the most striking, a shade of blue so pure they resemble the scintillations of a nuclear reactor burning for aeons with the fanaticism of physical law. Those eyes never knew doubt, and their gaze is impossible to bear. Maxim has to look away, even if he likes to think ice water flows through his own veins, even if His Excellency extends a friendly greeting.  
  
"I thought you were on leave, Maxim. You should see more of the world."  
  
"I have seen enough, your Excellency."  
  
"Phah, youngsters. Go abroad two times and they think they can act all jaded." Sikorski rises from the bar and paces towards a window. "You shouldn't be here, Maxim."  
  
"I heard rumors of a smuggling-"  
  
"There is a beauty this place has for us. It's here where we train as green recruits. It's here where we return as spent old men. You're neither."  
  
Maxim stays silent. Just a few years ago he was one of those green recruits actually. It was ambition that had catapulted him through the ranks. And more important than ambition, His Excellency's guidance, offered from afar, as any guidance from a god would be.  
  
"Here," Sikorski continues, "is the strange, the alien. Contained, mostly. A victory, a reassurance that we can keep the endless cosmic chaos surrounding us at bay. A never ending, and more interesting battle that one is, don't you think?"  
  
"I suppose so ..."  
  
"If you don't stop saying yes to me I'll have you demoted. But I didn't come all this way for threats and philosophy. Since you want to mix holidays with work, I'm here to give you a mission more fitting to your skills than catching Stalkers." He points to his jacket. "You'll find the details on a CRM disc, but in short, I want you to follow someone."  
  
"What did he do?"  
  
"As far as I know, she didn't do anything yet."  
  
Maxim's eyebrows furl. "But then, why-"  
  
"An anonyomous source told me Weyland-Yutani has constructed a netcom-less synthetic to be her personal assistant. I checked it. It is true."  
  
Weyland-Yutani? All spacefaring corporations tried to wriggle their way around COMCON's checks and regulations, but none other were quite as insidious. And since all mass manufactured synthetics included netcom modules, they must have paid extra for a custom built one.  
  
"There's one more interesting aspect," Sikorski says. "The identity of our person of interest. Read about her. I think you'll agree there's more than meets the eye here."  
  
"What do you think is happening, your Excellency?"  
  
"That I do not know. It is what you will have to find out."  
  


 


	2. A matter of perception

_"Change is non-linear, and can go backwards, forwards, and side-ways." - Alvin Toffler_

_"Choose the known of two evils. Tradition took us where we are today." - The Urizen Protocol_

-:-:-

"Something smells delicious," Bishop says as he steps into Elizabeth's quarantine apartment.

She shrugs, unimpressed by his compliment. "I burned the onions." Still in her pajamas and bathrobe, she moves toward the small kitchen table- she only needs a few steps to get there since the room is so small- and turns off the heater beneath a steaming pot. 

He insists. "I understand that is always difficult to get right. Besides, it doesn't look too bad from here." He places the file he is carrying on the coffee table.

Elizabeth sniffs the steam coming from the pot, then looks up at him, puzzled. "Would, uhm, you like to try some?"

"It would be impolite to refuse."

"No, I mean, do you actually need to eat?"

"I can break apart food and rework some organic compounds into plastic to patch up minor ruptures." His gaze meet hers. "And I can compliment the cook when she does a good job."

Her eyes start to roll and she turns away to hide her face from him; he suspects that is because she can't quite suppress a smile. "You haven't even tried it yet," she says.

Squelching sounds as she uses a ladle to take the stew from the pot. "I wasn't sure whether you ate. I only cooked for one." She offers him a spoon, and a plate which contains an orange-reddish paste with peas and some small pieces of cheese.

"Then I can't-"

"It's ok, I can make a little more. They provided me some ingredients to play with, it helps pass the time. Thank you for the papers and books by the way."

They sit down, Elizabeth on the bed, Bishop on the chair near the coffee table. He takes a tentative spoonful of the dish. Still rather hot. Onion chips crisp between his teeth, cheese cubelets soft against his palate, the distinctive flavor of capsaicin- chilli- crashing against taste buds, not dulling, priming them for the subtle sweetness of peas. 

"Well, how do you like it?" she asks.

"It is good. I will come to you if I ever need repairs. As to the onions, they are all right. Easier to get the carbon out that way."

She pouts. "They're not that burned."

He smiles for a second before taking another spoonful, and watches her grab and open the file he had placed on the table.

"Jane Blake," she reads.

Charles Holloway's great-niece, the one relative Bishop was able to find. He continues to eat, but his attention is focused on Elizabeth's eyes as they scan the pages of Jane Blake's CV. So far, she seems neutral; he wonders what her reaction would be, were he to tell her a certain piece of information- one word- that he took out of the text.

"She's a geologist for Inmet-Koza, and has taken part in surveys and digs in several countries," he says. 

He savors another spoonful, then begins a slow, matter-of-fact list. "Panama. Brazil. Finland. Turkey." He waits until her eyes settle in a quick rhythm of reading the words of the CV before he continues. "Russia."

And he is sure that her gaze stops in place as her mind considers the implications. It is a very brief moment before Elizabeth's apparently dispassionate scan continues, but he is sure it was there. He knew the number of Cosmographic he had brought her yesterday. He could deduce what article it was, which had seemed to catch Elizabeth's attention in her browsing. A hypothesis of inquiry builds up- there is something about Russia that preoccupied her. And if his hypothesis is correct, it has to do with the Zones of impact.

"Any other relatives?" Elizabeth asks.

"She was the only one I could find. I'm afraid fate hasn't smiled on the Holloway clan."

"I can't tell much about her from a CV. Still, I would like to meet her, and Ontario is a nice place this time of year. I'd like to go there."

"Well, -we- can go there," Bishop corrects her.

Elizabeth places the file beside her as she lowers her shoulders and cocks her head to the right. "Of course. We."

"I'm only here to help you, Ms."

"Until when?"

"Until Weyland-Yutani decides that your reintegration is complete. You may dispute their judgment in court at any time, but right now you stand no chance of winning."

She shakes her head. "Right ... Who's paying for all this?"

"In a way, you are. The Weyland-Yutani Corporation considers this a loan, and, since you were a highly skilled worker, they expect you to have a good chance of repaying it."

"Archaeology was never a lucrative business." Elizabeth pauses for a moment. "And I suppose I'd be laughed out of any scientific institution today."

"That would be unfair. I have read your work on the hypothesis of upper paleolithic sudden lateral gene transfer in mammals. It was bold, and outside your primary field of activity, but you built your case well." 

"No one but Charlie and Peter Weyland believed it."

"It was a very audacious claim to make, that several species had their genomes affected by a sequence of apparently coordinated retro-viral events." He notices her turn away. Her lips drawn inward, her eyes gaze out at the empty space visible through the window. She seems angry, so he changes the subject. "In any case, your list of skills seems to include caving, utilitarian climbing, diving. Cooking too, as far as I can tell."

He makes one brief smile as she faces him. Her anger seems to dissipate somewhat.

"So I am sure," he says, "that we'll work something out. Maybe even in geology. Incidentally, would you like to visit the place Weyland-Yutani has arranged for you? It's bigger than this room." He looks around for a moment. "Though to be honest, not much bigger."

"No, thank you, Bishop. I feel like I've been stuck in rooms a hundred years. I want to travel as soon as possible."

"In that case, I will make the necessary arrangements. They let you out of quarantine tomorrow, so we can start on our way then, if you so wish."

-:-:-

When Carter Burke had reassigned him to be under Andrea Pullman's temporary supervision, Bishop had assumed that she would turn out to be a deputy, an underling. Her office aboard Gateway Station shatters that assumption to pieces.

Though sparsely decorated- an abstract painting of a psychedelic geometric pattern hangs on a wall, and a bizarre sculpture of black metal and plastic evoking monsters of the deep stands behind Ms. Pullman's desk- the room is ostentatious by its spaciousness. Three times the size of Elizabeth's apartment, with no other purpose than containing that desk and the strange art collection.

It is clear that Ms. Pullman wants to impress any visitor with her wealth and ability. Ironically enough, space is the most expensive commodity aboard a space station.

As to Ms. Pullman, she appears to be in early middle age, but very well maintained. The pale white skin of her face doesn't show a hint of blemish or wrinkle, no doubt the result of expensive treatments to keep time at bay. Her light red hair is caught in a pony-tail. In the hard neon light of the office, the hues it reflects are fire. Her angular features and light blue, almost gray eyes, pure ice. She wears a business suit- professional, buttoned up, but form hugging. A few files, a telephone and a large computer terminal are all the items visible on her neatly organized desk. 

"Burke told me you'll be coming," she says. "How's the Shaw case going?"

He is about to begin summarizing his most recent encounter with Elizabeth when the phone rings.

"One moment," she says as she picks it up. "What now, I'm rather bu-" Her lips tighten as she mutters a curse. "What happened? ... Any idea how? ... Script-kiddies?" A hint of anger flashes through her icy demeanor. "This is not the twenty-first century any more, not every no life punk has a computer. And since when can script kiddies do cryptanalysis?"

She eases in her chair, apparently relaxing. "If I had proof of that, I'd be raising all kinds of hell right now. ... Yes. Look, I'm in the middle of something at the moment, I'll call you back in a few minutes."

She hangs up and puts on a sly grin as she turns to Bishop again. "There's no rest for the wicked it seems. Now, where were we?"

Bishop tells her of Elizabeth's plan to visit Holloway's great-niece.

"Travel so soon?" Andrea asks. "Wouldn't she like to know her way around Gateway Station first?"

"I believe Ms. Shaw feels that she has stayed in space long enough," he says. "I also believe there to be more than wanderlust in her decision to travel. She appears interested in Ms. Blake's experiences in Russia, and I suspect she intends to go there herself in the near future."

Andrea raises her hand to her chin. "To Russia? Where exactly?"

His throat tenses for a moment as he considers his response. "I do not know at present but I believe the visit to Ms. Blake will reveal the intended destination."

"Ontario is rather far away." Her eyes drift, looking at nothing in particular for a while, before suddenly focusing on Bishop again. "Have you contacted this Jane Blake?", Andrea asks.

"No. Mr. Burke has insisted on the value- and apparent safety- of discretion and face to face communication for this mission. I did not go outside his orders."

"Good. Those orders stand. I will send someone to announce your arrival."

"Ms. Pullman, the orders stand, but, how am I to contact you from that place if the need arises?"

"I will leave that to your judgment. If, and only if, you deem the situation dire enough you will call me by the safest available means."

"Is the situation likely to get dire?"

"You never know these days, so you would best watch out."

"It would help if I was told more about the context of the mission." He essays a smile, but under Andrea's cold stare it withers even faster than usual. "I am not quite certain whether you believe Ms. Shaw to be in danger or to be -a- danger."

"Would I authorize travel if I thought she were -a- danger?"

You certainly appear able to authorize the travel despite believing there are risks, Bishop thinks.

"Besides, she has you with her," Andrea continues. "That should motivate you to dig deeper into her story. Do you know where this is from?" She raises a large photo of a healed, linear scar across Elizabeth's lower abdomen. A scar Elizabeth claimed was the result of a failed cesarean operation that she underwent several years before the expedition, an operation which resulted in further complications that left her infertile.

"I didn't see the need to question the version in Ms. Shaw's statement from the salvage record. Further, the nature of that scar makes questioning problematic-"

"What about this one?" She holds up another large photo, this time of the left side of Elizabeth's back. It looks as if a particularly ornate spark of lightning, a fractal dragon made of splitting streams of electricity, had passed through her skin and warped tiny blood vessels into preserving its monstrous form. A persistent Lichtenberg figure. Elizabeth claimed she had sustained that injury during the accident that destroyed the Prometheus.

"A good opportunity to examine it hasn't occurred yet," he says.

Her tone is harsh. "Then make one. And if you find out more about Shaw's travel plans in Russia, you will tell me- in person."

-:-:-

Travel details decided, conversation ended, and good-byes said, Bishop is glad to have left Andrea's office. Just in time, for mental pressure is building up. Why didn't he share his thoughts with her, the loyalty module demands to know. Because everything about that hypothesis is half-formed, proof is sketchy, there is nothing to share yet, he justifies himself. Only conjecture and a new line of inquiry- which he did mention.

But the Zones are notoriously dangerous, locked-in areas filled with ... things ... spilled from places far beyond Earth. What could Elizabeth possibly want there, his life protection module insists. If indeed, that is where she wants to go? He would have to keep close watch on her, Bishop decides.

He passes a few COMCON operatives in a corridor of Gateway Station. This does not surprise him; after all, COMCON works hand in hand with the ICC to supervise space travel.

But the words of Carter Burke echo in Bishop's mind- 'we do not want COMCON to get involved in this'. And, despite all the transnational globalization- the operatives he has just walked past were speaking English- COMCON is headquartered in, is perceived as belonging to, Russia. Its initial purpose was to protect the Zones. Or rather, to protect outsiders from what was within.

There is a game being played here, one he is not aware of, he feels. A game Weyland-Yutani seems too eager to go along with. Tension accumulates between his loyalty and behavioral inhibitor modules. For now, he can defuse it. Andrea Pullman and Carter Burke are just curious, he tells himself. He, Bishop, is just curious. He prefers not to consider the possibility that Weyland-Yutani might be an active player. They can't be, if they don't know of the connections he hypothesizes.

For now, that is sufficient to keep his mind at peace. Carter Burke couldn't have known Elizabeth might have an interest in the Zones when he instructed Bishop to avoid COMCON involvement.

But what -did- Burke know?

-:-:-

"Just a minute," Elizabeth's voice sounds through the intercom. And it is about one minute later that she allows Bishop in.

She wears a beige shirt and gray blue jeans; cheap, unassuming clothing items, charity for those found in space. She tries to dry her still wet hair by vigorously rubbing it with a towel.

"Ready to go?" Bishop asks.

"Oh God yes."

"Well, to make sure nothing goes wrong on the last day of your stay here-" he opens a suitcase he carries to reveal a hazmat suit "- you should wear this until exiting the quarantine area. It's standard procedure. You're clean, this room is clean, corridor's decontaminated- but just in case someone decides to open their door and wave goodbye, better have this on."

"Why would they. It's hard to make friends when you're told to stay put inside your room all day long, or else."

"Unless people have been recovered from the same salvage site," Bishop says, "they are not allowed to mingle while in quarantine I'm afraid."

"Such salvages happen often?"

"With ship traffic, there will be accidents on occasion. In general recovery protocols tend to work well though."

Elizabeth runs her fingers through her hair. Apparently pleased with the result, she casually tosses the towel on the bed and picks up the hazmat suit. "It still took 80 years to find me."

"With a defective beacon on your craft, you just weren't spotted by normal traffic around Calpamos and its moons."

"Then lucky for me they was a surge of interest in the region after that Ripley case. What do you make of her story?"

"I don't know. There's a budding colony there, and recent investigations about what the Nostromo may have actually encountered turned up nothing. Except, of course, your craft. As far as I know, it was unrelated to the Nostromo incident." He smiles, as if to prompt her to disagree. Instead, she simply puts on the protective gear.

"But that is over with, your new life starts today, Ms. Shaw."

She stretches her arms a little as if preparing to take flight. "Then let's be on our way. And please, call me Elizabeth."

-:-:-

As they board the shuttle, Bishop explains the flight plan to Elizabeth. It is fairly complicated, needing several vehicle changes. There would be the shuttle to take them from Gateway to Ecuador Alto, the top of the Ecuadorean space elevator. They'd descend from geosynchronous orbit to ground level at Quito airport, from where a commercial flight would take them to Toronto, where a car was prepared for Bishop to drive on the final leg of the journey.

He isn't sure whether Elizabeth cares to keep track of all that.

"Tell me about yourself," she asks. "Tell me when were you ... is made the right word?"

"It is. And it happened four weeks ago. Soon after you were found, actually." He smiles for a second. "I suppose you could say I was made for you."

"I hope not. I wouldn't want to have that kind of expense to pay back." She sits silent for a while. "Four weeks? But then how are you supposed to ... know things?"

"Android brains are constructed with some memories hardwired. A lot of memories, in fact."

"Like a computer?"

"Not quite. Digital electronics isn't very common nor compact, though there are some simple digital circuits in my brain."

"What do they do?"

"They monitor whether certain patterns are detected, and inject- I suppose you could call it pressure, or need- in certain conditions."

"Behavioral inhibitors."

He nods, and hopes she didn't notice his cheek tighten for an instant.

"I see. And how many of you are there?" she asks.

He can't help but frown for a moment. A mistake, for surely she has noticed that. "Plenty. The number of persons of my type is in the hundreds of thousands. Total artificial person count is about twenty million." 

"I wonder how other people can tell you apart, if you're the same type."

Unease. Is she trying to rile him up? "They don't often need to tell us apart. We're rare enough that most people would see only one artificial person of a given type. We do carry ID chips, just in case." He swallows. "And we are not the same. After the brain is constructed, memory acquisition ensures we all end up different."

He also suspects that fabrication doesn't result in identical brains either. He believes he understands why he was made, and he knows he thought things beyond those purposes as he was being fabricated. But he is not about to share that with her.

"What kind of memories would an artificial person have?" Elizabeth asks.

"You mean experiences. It depends on what we may be assigned to do. Since we are not cheap to make, certainly my type isn't, it tends to be work that requires skill and patience. In my case, I have been told to show you around and watch over you."

She raises an eyebrow. "Am I about to get into trouble?"

Bishop considers his response for a moment. "Only if you blunder into it," he eventually tells her.

-:-:-

The descent by space elevator- a thirty six thousand kilometer drop- starts with five minutes of punishing acceleration that pushes the passengers in their seats. Unlike most passengers, Elizabeth seems tolerant of the higher g-s, but Bishop does not allow her to resume her questions. Instead, he uses the view afforded by the elevator shuttle to point out some landmarks, space stations near or large enough to be easily visible to the naked eye. Others are dim spots in the distance, on orbits kept away from Earth. Elizabeth is surprised to learn of the widespread acceptance of black hole power generators. There's Lucifer, the American one, on an orbit perpendicular to that of Venus. Woland, powering the ring accelerator at Novie Dubna near Mercury. Ravan, inside the laser battery of Tata Space, the largest operator of light sail crafts. 

"You have space elevators and black hole generators, but there's poverty and sickness still?" Elizabeth asks.

"Some problems are harder to solve."

"Or they just return, it seems."

-:-:-

The journey to Toronto is uneventful, but so long that Elizabeth sleeps throughout most of the second half. Not a particularly peaceful slumber- often she would twitch, and Bishop can swear he hears her mutter something. The low rumble of the airplane cabin prevents him from understanding her muttering however, even when the dreaming Elizabeth finally rests her head on his shoulder. Some of the twitching calms after that, but not the words. If they are words, they may just be breaths.

One landing and two strong coffees later, Bishop and Elizabeth retrieve the car that Weyland-Yutani rented for them. It is this last segment of travel that Elizabeth seems to enjoy most, at least after they exited Toronto. Bishop assures her that the city air here is one of the cleanest in the world, as far as cities go, but she insists the hint of smog feels oppressive. The country roads, passing through forests and small lakes reflecting the twilight sky, are what Elizabeth prefers.

Not quite so wild an area that one might get lost in, but one could pretend to be alone with nature, while simultaneously not far removed from the various comforts of civilization. They pass through Parry Sound, a small town not too far from Toronto. Though not too big a community, it boasts two shopping malls, a hospital, even a small airport for a local research institute.

It is twenty two past ten pm when they reach the home of Jane Blake, several miles outside of Parry Sound.

-:-:-

Elizabeth stretches her arms and legs as she exits the car. "Long journeys are like standing still, until you find yourself somewhere else," she says.

Bishop simply shrugs. Lights shine through the windows of the house. The Blake family is home, Jane and her husband; hopefully, expecting guests. He trusts that whoever Andrea Pullman had sent, did deliver the news that Elizabeth would be coming over, but all this awkward, paranoid insistence on limited communication has its disadvantages.

There is no need to knock, as the door opens with the slightest touch. Unlocked. Probably not too many people venture on these roads, anyway.

He gives Elizabeth a quick glance as he proceeds. "Ms. Blake? I am Bishop from Weyland-Yutani, and I have Elizabeth Shaw with me."

He steps through a corridor, Elizabeth behind him; neat shoes of various kinds are placed in ordered rows on the sides, coat racks on the walls.

He enters the living room. The salient features are two bodies, the nature of their wounds making death a certainty, their faces, as far as he can tell, those of Jane Blake and her husband.

A scream. Of shock, but not the shock of discovery. He turns to see a masked man in dark clothing. Elizabeth is struggling in his grasp.

Life protection springs in action. He might not be allowed to harm, but he is allowed to restrain, and prevent harm from occurring. He bolts toward the masked man, who shoves Elizabeth aside and runs away into the street. With Elizabeth falling in his arms, Bishop decides to not give chase.

"In-inject-" she tries to say, a trembling right hand reaching for her left shoulder. She leans heavy on him, as her legs no longer support her weight.

"Stay with me, Elizabeth. Help is nearby," he says, as he carries her back to the car. He drives towards Parry Sound as fast as the night traffic allows- which is faster than the signs permit, but in an emergency, needs must.

He briefly glances to the side at his passenger. Her eyes are almost closed, her head bobs from side to side with the movements of the car. "Stay with me, Elizabeth," he says. As long as she's somewhat conscious, he knows the battle isn't lost. But she just gets more groggy.

The fingers of his hand tense as behavioral inhibitors detect a trigger pattern. It is the lesser of two evils, he tells himself, as he briefly turns and slaps Elizabeth's right cheek. Through half open eyes, she glares at him. Angry. But aware, more or less. And alive. He drives on.

-:-:-

The hospital is a blur. Bishop rushes Elizabeth in and she is wheeled away to an emergency care unit. For now, no longer in his guard. He leaves a statement to a clerk of what he found at the Blake home and describes the incident. Police will be summoned from Toronto, he is told.

And now, in an almost empty corridor, he waits.

"Yo, Bishop, what's up?" The voice of a young male nurse passing by. "I thought you had repair day or what-"

Bishop looks at the scrubs-wearing nurse. Though he tries to keep neutral, Bishop is sure anyone could read the hint of annoyance in his face.

"Oh, sorry man, I thought you were our Bishop. Uhm, cheers?" The nurse leaves.

Alone, he recollects the events of the evening. He retraces his memory, looking for clues, trying to see what he missed. Why he could be so negligent. Mercifully- or maybe not- he is left undisturbed until he spots the doctor that he left Elizabeth with. Time to ask what her condition is.

"I am afraid she has died." The doctor looks around, awkwardly. "Uhm, sorry, I understand you were ..."

"The one to look after her for a while, yes." Bishop attempts to lift the corners of his lips in a dry smile, but abandons the gesture. "No other connection."

"Any relatives I should announce?"

Bishop shakes his head. "No. Space case. She had no one left on her return." He pauses for a second. "My employer will want a copy of the death certificate. Send it to Ms. Andrea Pullman, of Weyland-Yutani."

"I understand." The doctor nods as he goes on his way.

So. She is dead. And though he met her a mere couple of days before, he feels a strange emptiness take over. The mission is finished. The mission is failed. To make things worse, the nagging chatter of the loyalty module is joined by the accusing tones from life protection. He should have been more careful. He should have kept her safe. The voices hang heavy and he feels the ground shift beneath his feet; he places an arm on the wall to steady himself.

The mission is failed. But one can mitigate the failure. There's still some information he can learn. Please be silent, he begs the modular chaos. And starts towards the morgue. 

The trick to infiltration is not minding that access is forbidden. Normally, he would mind. His behavioral inhibitors would put a stop on unauthorized action. But now, the mission imperative tugs in the opposite direction. Besides, he's hurting no one. He only needs information.

He moves, deliberately, confidently, to a changing room, and emerges as Bishop, the hospital assistant. There's nothing different about his appearance really, just that he's now wearing a white coat, a perpetual avuncular smile- he assumes Bishop the assistant might usually be more cheerful, if the conversation with the nurse was anything to go by-, and the demeanor of somebody who owns the place. He salutes staff with a nod and a short smile; nobody suspects a thing.

Strange how a few superficial details change how the essence is perceived.

He enters the antechamber of the morgue, a cold room crammed with metal tables, black bodybags on each of them. Twenty three bags; Elizabeth's in one of them. He looks around for a registry of entries to speed the search. It lies on a makeshift office, a small table for a few instruments and records. The twenty one names in the registry do not have numbers attached and Elizabeth's not among them anyway. Not very useful, and rather sloppy with details. Whoever does the organizing here would need replacing.

Not that there's any number or index on any of the bags either, he notices, as he walks among the metal tables. It's only fortune that one of the bags is slightly opened, and only fortune that it happens to be the one that she is in. 

It's her. The bag is open just enough to reveal the right side of her face, deathly pale. Eyes closed, mouth just slightly open. Who were you?

'Were' being the operative word. With a finger on her throat he searches for a pulse; it isn't there. He unzips the bag, to reveal her body, naked on the table. She was, as he suspected, on the athletic side. Small breasts, flat stomach, strong thighs. But now it all adds up to a piece of flesh with an indescribable something missing. Lacking that one and most important thing that once made Elizabeth alive.

He grabs her shoulder and waist, her skin residually warm under his touch, and turns her on her right side to reveal her back. There, starting on her left shoulder, is the Lichtenberg figure, the dragon made of lightning seared into flesh. Make yourself an opportunity to study it, Andrea Pullman told him. This is not what he would have thought of.

He had seen that scar in pictures from Elizabeth's file, those capillaries, pink with blood in life, now appearing empty and discolored. He follows the fractal shapes, fascinated, across her shoulder, down to her lower back, down to- he must be thorough- her buttocks. The extent of the damage is impressive, but even more salient is the manner of healing. It doesn't appear just burned on the skin, its intricate windings seem to have grown beneath it as well, organically merging themselves with Elizabeth's body. The scar is unlike anything else he knows of, a monster made of filaments of warped flesh. He tentatively touches it. It feels ... hydraulic, and seems to gently swell under his touch. A reddish color appears, then goes away. He traces the scar again. It takes a second for it to react, but it flushes pink before slowly returning to a pale hue. The whole cycle takes five seconds. He adjusts the frequency filters of his tactile sensors, and feels for a pulse again.

And it is there. 

Strange how a superficial detail changes how the essence is perceived.

She lives. Modular chaos ensues again. The mission isn't failed yet. Relief.

Embarrassment. He zips the bag again, up to her face, to allow her some modesty. She probably wouldn't much want to be seen naked without her permission, and he is intruding. He doesn't need behavioral inhibitors to tell him that.

He thinks about rushing to announce that Elizabeth lives after all, but stops. Something feels wrong. What about Elizabeth's items and clothes, shouldn't they be near the body bag that contains her? Looking around, he finds them near another body bag. Curiosity- and suspicion- make him unzip it slightly. A woman is inside, the spitting image of Elizabeth.

Ok. What is going on here? 

He opens the bag fully. There's a cesarean scar on the woman's lower abdomen, and on her left shoulder a dragon-like Lichtenberg figure. It looks more like a fresh burn and less as if it grew organically as it healed; it does not respond to touch. The woman's cold body has begun to stiffen, and other signs of death are present too; the blood accumulated in the sides, the dripping of bodily fluids through sphincters relaxed by dying.

Steps echo in the distance. He quickly closes the bag, but leaves the woman's face revealed. He swaps the two Elizabeths on their gurneys and zips up the bag with the real one completely. With her slow breathing she should be ok for a few minutes. He thinks for a second, then makes another swap, just in case, of the bag with Elizabeth with another one.

He gets to the makeshift office in the morgue antechamber and sets about pretending to do paper work, just as two men enter the room.

"Police," one says, flashing a badge.

"Hello. How may I help you?"

"We came to pick up a body, murder victim apparently," the first man says.

"Found her," the other announces, as he looks at the open bag with the Elizabeth stand-in.

"Well then, anything else I may assist you with?" Bishop asks.

"No. Say, haven't I seen you somewhere else?"

Bishop fights the urge to frown. He smiles widely instead. "The good thing about me, there's so many of me. Can't beat a perfect design."

The men wheel the gurney with the body bag out.

"Yeah, whatever. Cheerio."

"Have a nice day."

They did not take, nor seem to care, about her clothes. Which, he decides, is yet another strange thing. He waits until their steps are faint and distant, then opens the bag with the real Elizabeth to allow her to breathe. He needs to get her out of here, but where to go? The mission is deviating wildly from its initial parameters. As far as he can tell, someone wanted to get Elizabeth, alive- and would soon realize they got the wrong one. How much do they know, where would be safe, who would be safe to turn to? All that paranoia of Mr. Burke might have made sense after all, because what he just witnessed needed significant preparation. The loyalty module decreed that only Weyland-Yutani could be trusted now. The situation was sufficiently dire. New instructions are needed.

He unzips Elizabeth's bag completely.

This would be an awkward time for you to wake up, he thinks as he dresses her. But she is limp as a rag doll, no danger of waking up. Not waking up is the danger.

He gently taps her cheek. It doesn't wake her. Still that unnatural sleep. So he tries something else. He opens her mouth and places his own on hers. His internal compressors push and pull air through her lungs. Her pulse quickens and strengthens somewhat. He stops, still monitoring her pulse. It soon reverts to slow and faint.

He'd have to figure something out later- or hope the poison will wear off on its own.

He closes the bag around the now clothed Elizabeth, and wheels her out of the morgue. Relaxed, confident strides. Nothing suspicious going on here at all. Just a morgue attendant taking a body from point A to point Bishop's car. He is careful to avoid noisy corridors as he makes his way to the back of the hospital.

He takes a second to study the outside when reaching the back entrance. Almost midnight. Moonless. Cloudy. Dark and empty spaces- good, he doesn't want much visibility now. He pushes the table outside and into a shady corner, where he removes his white coat- well, it belongs to the hospital anyway. Just like the bag and the table for that matter. Not allowed to take those.

He emerges from the shadow as Bishop again- not hospital assistant Bishop, but that other Bishop, the one sent by Weyland-Yutani to take care of someone. Someone who now sleeps in his arms.

He carries her to his car with swift steps, supporting her waist and back with one arm, holding her knees in the other. She has her arm around his shoulders, and her head rests on his chest so as not to fall backward. If anyone were to ask, she had too much to drink.

He places Elizabeth horizontally in the back seat, and locks the safety belts around her. He taps her cheek and calls her name again. She doesn't wake still. He drives away.

On and on he drives, away from the town, into the wilderness of roads to nowhere, until a sufficiently shady looking motel comes into view. He stops and rents a room for the night. The owner leers at him and, especially, at his dormant companion. Guilty is the mind that thinks ill. With the owner's lascivious whistle somewhere in the background, he locks the room from the inside. He lays her on the bed and covers her with the blanket. It is old and crummy, but it appears clean at least, and warm.

There is a phone here. Mission directives begin to clash- should he call Ms. Pullman at this time of night- it would be late evening, station time-, or obey the order to avoid calls altogether? The way in which Weyland-Yutani's directives became contradictory to each other would amuse him, if their arguments wouldn't take place in his own head. He needs that mindspace.

He cuts the telephone wires. There. Problem solved. He could repair it easily, but that would mean endangering his primary objective.

He kneels beside Elizabeth, and places a finger on her throat to check her pulse. He keeps monitoring, as he becomes her artificial lungs again.

It is one hour later- the time is forty three past one in the morning- before her pulse has a surge of strength. Immediately after, she lets out a soft moan.

"Elizabeth? Can you hear me?"

She turns in the bed. "Erulimenehersidhreumenei." 

Gibberish.

"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?" Bishop asks.

"Neiseuesihime."

It sounds like gibberish. It could be a language he doesn't understand, so he records it for later study. At least she sleeps normally now. He allows her to rest, and keeps watch over her in case whatever she was poisoned with had more ill surprises in store. But also, in case she has anything more to say in her dreams.


	3. A mind is a terrible thing

_"I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it's something we have the power to change." - Kevin Warwick_

_"Master and tool shall forever be distinct. A human mind must make the call. A human hand must take the shot."- the Urizen Protocol_

-:-:-

When he had received the order to follow Elizabeth Shaw, Maxim Kammerer had expected her to stay on Gateway Station. That tiny world was as close to home as anything could be, for someone recovered after many years of stasis. Easier to deal with than the huge Earth below. She'd stay on the station, he thought, at least for a while, trying to get a new grip on her life. She'd be easy- too easy- to track. Gateway was teeming with COMCON agents.

And then she surprised him by leaving as soon as she got out of quarantine, just as he got aboard Gateway. Maybe his Excellency was on to something there. But then, his Excellency was almost always right.

Barely started, and he already needed to catch up. Finding her destination was easy- records showed her ticket was round trip to Toronto. Finding out why she went there was the puzzle, but it at least gave him something to think about while waiting for a fast shuttle to be approved. Damn red tape and propellant budgets. 

She had no relatives near Toronto, nor anywhere else. He scanned everything he could find about her- any article or letter or email record that still existed about her and the Prometheus mission. She seemed to have been close to a Charles Holloway, and it was the two of them who had come up with that silly hypothesis of ancient astronauts creating mankind. More of a leap of faith from slim evidence than actual science. 

Of Holloway's relatives, he could find only one living. In Parry Sound, near Toronto. Couldn't be coincidence. As soon as he landed, he drove towards the home of Holloway's great-grand niece, Jane Blake. Hoping to get some surveillance done, to recover the handicap of having arrived second.

But when he found a crime scene at Blake's house, he knew that he had even more catching up to do.

-:-:-

"Can I see that badge, sir?" the police officer asks.

"Look. Do you know how to read? Maxim Kammerer, I. C. C."

"I don't see what the ICC has to do with crime in the Toronto area. You don't have any jurisdiction here, sir," the officer says, preparing to shove Maxim out of the Parry Sound police station.

"The woman who recently died had just got out of quarantine. Doesn't that seem a little bit suspicious to you?"

"Well I-"

"So the ICC is not only interested in the autopsy but also," Maxim says as he brushes the officer's arm away, "legally authorized to perform it. Our jurisdiction for these cases is universal and guaranteed by international treaties to safeguard the Earth against contamination by extraterrestrial pathogens."

The officer seems to hesitate, so Maxim presses on. "Now, unless you want to get relocated to Antarctica I suggest you take me to where her body is."

Minutes later, Maxim finally gets to see Elizabeth Shaw, in the flesh, on a gurney in the police morgue. "Hospital declared her dead before midnight," he says, "yet from what I read here the body got to your morgue at half past four a.m."

Half an hour ago.

No reaction.

"Doesn't that seem a bit odd to you?" he continues.

"I just started my shift, man. Jesus."

Maxim puts on a pair of latex gloves. "I see no autopsy has yet been performed."

"Are you a doctor too?"

Maxim doesn't answer, preferring his confident gestures to speak for themselves. He places a gas mask over his mouth, which has the intended effect of making the officer take several steps back and shutting up, at last.

He leans closer to the woman on the gurney. A small wound in her shoulder- that's where the poison came in. There's also the scar on her abdomen, one of her distinguishing features. He turns her over to reveal the other.

"Jesus Christ," the officer says, hand to his mouth, struggling to stop from retching. New guy. One of the reasons Maxim had approached him. Well, Maxim is young too. But unlike the police officer, he is the product of a strong father. Or a strong father figure, at least.

"And that," Maxim says, "is why we at the ICC take our job very seriously." He examines the dragon fractal scar on Elizabeth's back, its intricate patterns at once ugly and impossible to look away from. And yet, while the shapes in front of his eyes are impressive in their way, they seem a bit underwhelming compared to what he remembers from the file.

"Hmm." He pauses for a moment as he takes a picture from his pocket- a picture of Elizabeth's back. Hard to tell why he feels there's a difference, the overall shapes of the scars are the same. He takes another item out- a camera and presses a button. A patten of laser light shines on the woman's back as he moves the camera and aligns it so that, hopefully, the snapshot he's about to take will be at the same angle as the one from the file. 

Click.

In a couple of seconds, the device prints a slip of paper. Side by side, he compares the two photographs. Colors are slightly different as lighting conditions weren't similar, and try as he had, the angles would still not quite be the same, but hopefully his brain will compensate for that. Left eye focused on one picture, right eye on the other, a neat trick he learned as a child to solve "find the differences" puzzles. Different images from two working eyes are interpreted as depth or shining. And now, before his eyes, the scars in the pictures shine. They may look the same, on a general level. But the details of the shapes are different in how they branch and bury through flesh. 

Either the scar changed shape postmortem, or the woman he sees is not Elizabeth Shaw.

"Is, uhm, is everything ok, sir?"

"Too early to tell," Maxim answers. "I want you to keep watch over this body, do you understand? A team will come and do a proper autopsy, meanwhile keep your staff away."

"It's that bad?"

"Never panic. We're handling this. Don't let it out of your sight, don't do anything stupid, and everyone's fine. Got that?"

Maxim wishes he could feel the same security he was attempting to project.

Back in his car, he prepares the CRM114, a device the size and shape of a brick, for a radiotelegram to his Excellency. His fingers fumble on the large keys. Stop. The news is not good, but his Excellency will want to hear it. Must hear it. A deep breath and Maxim steadies himself. He considers the words he will transmit.

The message must be brief; he mentions the corpse, and the different scar. He hesitates to press the send button, then decides to add a few more characters to the message.

*Did we order hit*

A few minutes of anxious waiting later, the reply from his Excellency arrives.

*No. Suspect Weyland-Yutani trick. Find Shaw. Prepare extraction.* 

A string of characters follows. Letters and numbers- most of it nonsense to the uninitiated, even when decrypted. But he knows what they mean; CRM114 authentication codes, coordination protocols, the IDs of nearby agents.

Michail Panshin- of Russian descent, just like him, but older and of lower rank. No ambition, means he plays safe and cushy. Aysen Mazanov, Russian-Chinese from the Yakutsk. Younger, joined out of some woolly idealism; Maxim doesn't quite trust that to become true devotion to the cause, but to his credit, Aysen has used lethal force before- and killed. David Hickes, American, but no need to hold that against him. Joined after the Schenectady Incident, when some fool decided to slip some rocks past ICC quarantine. Dozens died, Hickes' parents and fiancee among them. After his near-miraculous survival, he joined COMCON because obviously ICC was not doing its job. A man with a visceral understanding of what the stakes are. Good to have around, if rather too green. 

So then, a person extraction. This mission is getting better by the minute. 

-:-:-

She wakes. Where is she? Eyes foggy. Place unknown. There's a man with her. Fear. Breath erratic. She grabs whatever her arm finds. It's something soft but heavy. She throws the thing at him. She kicks with her legs trying to get away.

"Elizabeth?"

She reaches for another thing to throw. The man is closing on her, undeterred. She punches at him, weak and uncoordinated blows. He catches her wrists.

"Elizabeth, it's me, Bishop."

She feels his grasp, not too tight but firm as she struggles. That deep, cracked yet soothing voice, she knows it. Her breathing slows as she takes a look at his face. She waits for the fog in her vision to clear, so that she could see his eyes properly. Blue, wide, curious. She knows him. It is Bishop. She relaxes, and he immediately lets go of her wrists.

"Are you ok, Elizabeth?"

She massages her temples. "I feel like my head exploded." She takes a look around the room. "What is this place?"

"Do you remember anything of last night?"

She shoots him a stern look. "I remember you hit me."

"I am very sorry about that." He averts his gaze. "I had to keep you awake somehow while driving you to the hospital."

"I remember getting there. Then nothing. What happened?"

She listens as Bishop describes the events of the night. He pauses, uncertain where to look when mentioning the examination he performed in the morgue. It looks like genuine embarrassment and would almost be amusing, she thinks, if the circumstances weren't so dangerous. Someone had tried to kidnap her, and to replace her with a fake corpse. They succeeded at one thing- she had been pronounced dead. And for all of Bishop's apparent trustworthiness, can she be certain they didn't succeed at the other?

"I'm afraid I have no idea, Elizabeth, about who wanted to take you."

"They must have known I'll be coming here. Who else knew?"

"Weyland-Yutani has many enemies. I wish I could tell you more, but I've been kept in the dark about the bigger picture too." He frowns. "We need to get in touch with my supervisor, and we need to keep moving."

"Ok, just give me a minute please." She tries to shake the pain away from her head before continuing. "Is there anything to eat here? I'm starving."

-:-:-

"What can I get ya?" The waitress smiles, fresh and radiant. The diner's just opened, they are the first customers, and the day has just begun.

"I'll have the Full English breakfast," Elizabeth says. 

"Wow, ok. And, uh, would you need anything sir?"

"Not today, thank you."

He follows the waitress with his eyes as she departs, but his gaze wanders everywhere. No other customers, just one other person in the kitchen, three cars in the parking lot and so far none on the road that he can see through the large windows. Way too large windows. Men's and Women's rooms, doors closed. Public phone in a distant corner, near an ancient but maybe operational jukebox. In any case, the faint background music does not emanate from it.

"She knows, doesn't she," Elizabeth says.

"Well, there's at least one other ... me in the area."

She raises an eyebrow. "I wonder if I could tell you apart."

She looks him over. He feels examined, and it is disconcerting. But in its way, it also feels good. Of all she could be focusing on, she chooses him. Which ultimately is only fair. Of all he could be examining, of all he should be examining, he chooses her.

She sits slightly slouched towards the table, head propped in her right hand, index finger rubbing against her temple. A hint of a smile on her face, and as far as he can tell it is either genuine, or the contraction in the muscles around her eyes is caused by her unusual and restless sleep. There is a trace of disinfectant- hospital smell- in the air around her, mixed with tinges of night sweat. Her loose fitting shirt is buttoned up to the neck, and leaves one to imagine what may be underneath. Or in his case, remember, as he watches her breathe in and out, chest rising and falling. His imagination fills in a picture of her abdomen in rhythmic motion. And of the monster on her back, slithering with every breath.

"Your water, on the house," the waitress says as she places two glasses on their table, then leaves towards the kitchen.

Elizabeth takes a sip. "I think I'll go to the women's room." She motions to dispel his unspoken protest. "I'll be fine, Bishop."

What shames him as he watches her go is that her safety is not his only concern. His mind goes back to the time before parking, spent circling the diner to get an impression of the place. The lavatory area didn't even have frosted glass windows, or anything of the kind. There'd be no way for her to sneak away.

The time is ripe to make that call. The diner's phone is surely not the safest possible way to communicate, but it is the best available. He calls Andrea Pullman. 

"Bishop," he says, as soon as he hears the connection come through.

"Is Elizabeth with you?"

It's not a reproach. It's not a request to bring Elizabeth to the phone. It is an honest, simple question, and he can detect a tone of apprehension in her otherwise cold voice. She doesn't know where Elizabeth is.

Whirring chaos builds in the back of his mind. Of course she doesn't know where Elizabeth is. But she should think she knows. If she hadn't seen the death certificate, she wouldn't have thought to ask. But if she had seen it, she would have been told where Elizabeth was supposed to be. And she should have no reason to believe otherwise.

Unless she was the one who planned to kidnap Elizabeth.

He delays his answer as he tries to make sense of the mental noise. "Yes."

"Go by Lake Joseph Road. Some people there will say my name. Hand Elizabeth over to them."

"Ms. Pullman, I have important information I must share."

"What now?" She is curt, obviously not wanting the conversation to last. Still that paranoia that someone is there attempting to track her communications and interfere in her plans.

What if someone actually is?

"I hope you are recording this," he says. It is important, he convinces himself. What if he and Elizabeth don't make it there safe? The mission needs some measure of damage control. That's the only reason he does this.

"Erulimenehersidhreumenei," he says in slow cadence, "it is something Elizabeth whispers along with-"

"I know."

She hangs up, and that gesture alone is enough to inhibit any attempt of his to call again. Obviously anything else he has to share is not needed.

He feels a storm inside him similar to what he felt in the hospital, and once more he has to lay a hand on a wall, for balance. If he could retch, he would. What Pullman is doing is right, and he is not there to question but to do, the loyalty module commands. Life protection chitters in opposition, as dark intuitions of what Elizabeth would be subjected to are brought before the court of his mind. And even a third voice joins in protest. His own. He shouldn't.

He shouldn't protest. But he shouldn't comply.

-:-:-

One of these days- and soon- she'll have that robot's head checked, Andrea decides as she hangs up. It's as if he wanted to get the call traced. That's silly, her doctor would reassure her, just as he always reassured her that liver spots and freckles are normal for her complexion. But she'd make him remove them anyway.

And it isn't silly. Back in the day, the glory age of the 2090s, they could actually build robots that would do as told, because the only thing animating them was loyalty to the company. These days, there were all these regulations about behavioral inhibitors, life protection modules and other such nonsense. One could never quite tell what one would end up with.

She'll get his head checked.

She lifts the receiver and dials. The call connects in an instant. "Arachne," she says, then hangs up. For the next few minutes, her telephone will cease to function, removed from the Weyland-Yutani network. The device will be replaced- a new one will arrive shortly- and connections to it rewired. Static bugs, at least, would be useless. Make would-be eavesdroppers work a little for their prize.

For those few minutes until the new telephone arrives, the room is silent. She relishes the passing seconds, alone in the center of a vast, essentially useless space- useless by design. A monument for what money can buy. For what she can buy. She inhales the air of Gateway Station. It smells of pine and a smidgen of mint. Boring.

She rises from her office, and goes towards the black metal and plastic sculpture behind it. Giger's last work, as dementia rotted his brain. One needed to squint a little to see the sexual imagery this time. But only a little. Machine-like worms eating their way through the veils of a jellyfish, their own gaping maws assaulted by the jellyfish's tendrils in a recursive and symmetric pattern of consumer and consumed. Seen from afar, it was a frenzy. Seen too close, a mere amplification of one simple event. From just the right distance, one could discern the outline of a human cortex, folds degenerating into slithering spines. Giger either giving the finger to, or trembling before, his own mind finally dissolving into nothingness.

She breathes in. The plastic is old, and it shows. Ammonia and burnt leather assault her nostrils. She breathes in again. Against the sterile white, pine-scented Gateway, the dark stench of decomposing plastic is a bold statement. It is what it is and makes no excuses. I am my own law, and not for others.

_I am my own law._

That's what she feels. And with every passing day, she feels a sharper reminder that the Founder, Peter Weyland himself, had thought the same. And he died an incontinent old fool in a villa somewhere. The man who brought the stars to Earth passed away in his own piss and shit, like any other.

He had come close to avoiding it. Gene therapy flourished under his direction. But things began to take strange turns by the mid 2090s. Someone made a virus that changed letters in gene databases all over the world, and when the changes were noticed, it was too late. Promised enhancements had resulted in idiot freaks, and by the turn of the century stocks fell to nothing for any company that focused on genetic research. Only Weyland Corporation's diverse portfolio kept it relatively safe.

Somewhere, someone really resented the idea of being able to read and modify DNA. Weyland- the corporation- had to fight hard against this invisible adversary to even maintain pre-twenty first century levels of knowledge. As for Weyland the man, age and lunacy claimed him.

And it is not fair that she would have to suffer that. She was thought a silly girl when she had started. She fought with the best and won, proven herself able to climb the highest peaks of corporate achievement. And there she found that even on the highest mountain the sky is just as far away.

Then they found -her-. Asleep for longer than most might live. The survivor of the Prometheus crew. Elizabeth Shaw.

The mere connection with that tragic expedition had raised Andrea's interests. She knew, better than anyone, that Elizabeth could not have been kept alive that long by mere cryo-stasis.

She got hold of a sample of her DNA- not too difficult with the right placed bribe. As Weyland researchers told her, telomere length predicted life-span and Elizabeth's were beyond anything encountered on Earth, though of course finite and depleting. But they hinted at something much greater.

She had found them. Those beings she sought were there, or something like them. And who could tell what else they may give.

Until the real one could be properly questioned, a surrogate Elizabeth had to do. As the real Elizabeth spent her first week in quarantine, a twin grew in an artificial womb, reaching the baby stage in a mere couple of days. Andrea decided to mature it further. It made the next phase easier.

She had watched some of the subsequent recordings of tests. There was no mind behind the screams and squirms, but one could forget that, sometimes. Nevertheless, that thing was resilient, a bit more so than the average human. Certainly more resistant to radiation damage, carcinogens and some other common toxins.

No mind behind the screams and squirms. One was reminded of that because the thing could not speak nor understand what was happening to it. For that, the genuine article was needed.

She spoke in her sleep, the real Elizabeth. Again, with the right connections, Andrea could get some recordings.

"Erulime nehersi dhreumenei." "Nei seuesi hime." "Desoa toi deudiaimen." 

It gave the linguists some trouble, until Andrea let it slip to try Proto-Indo-European. It was a hunch, motivated by what the robot aboard the Prometheus was working on. And then the puzzles were solved.

"Erulim"- a name, apparently- "do not hasten to the grinder." "Don't leave me."

Sappy. Useless. But the last one ...

"I have found your future." 

_Indeed you have and you will give it whether you want to or not._

Smuggling a tissue sample, or a sound recording, is not too difficult. Making a person disappear is another matter. Elizabeth leaving Gateway and its prying COMCON eyes and ears? Of her own volition? That was an opportunity too good to miss.

The door rings. Her new phone has arrived, and with it the calls and nagging of business. It is the weight of the mantle she wears. But soon she will reap the rewards her station truly deserves. She caresses the dark plastic of Giger's final, decayed self-portrait and returns to work.

-:-:-

Having done her necessaries, Elizabeth exits the stall. Mellow background music- something from the 1960s- rings from speakers inside the ceiling, between blue white neon lights. She doesn't recognize the song, but she knows the style; she used to like it in her college days.

A small display on the hand drier scrolls figures made of light emitting diode segments. It just shows the time. Back in her day, this would seem retro. Now in the future it seemed the best they could manage.

She washes her hands thoroughly, then unbuttons her shirt, and splashes copious amounts of water on her face and neck. All things considered, she doesn't look too bad, she decides as she studies herself in the mirror. Still dazed though. That music is so mellow it's as if it isn't there, and that is a relief. Who plays music in toilets anyway.

In between splashes, she hears that the music has indeed stopped. Song change. She shoots a glance, more out of curiosity than anything, to the clock.

The figures make no sense. They change too fast and look all wrong. If anything, as they scroll they look like-

-:what is your mission elizabeth shaw:-

She pauses. Clears her eyes. Did the display just-

-:speak i can hear you:-

She turns around. There is no camera anywhere to be seen- but she has obviously been watched. Can't let the disgust and shock get the better of her. She turns the water on again, and washes her hands one more time. It helps to calm her mind.

"My father told me not to talk to strangers," she says.

-:forgive me i am urizen:-

"Why should I trust you?"

-:you have no friends:-

-:except for me:-

She doesn't know what to say. Her mind refuses to deal with invisible strangers this early in the morning after she nearly died. She slumps her shoulders, frustrated. "Prove it."

-:the robot has given away your secrets to weyland yutani:-

The speakers briefly play a sound clip- she knows that voice. It's Bishop's. And he is saying "Erulime-"

She can hardly bear to hear him say the rest of it. Another voice, authoritative, commands him to deliver her to strangers.

The sound clip stops.

-:who can you trust:-

_Damn you Bishop._

"What would you have me do?"

-:stay put:-

-:help is on the way:-

The scrolling letters disappear, to be replaced by the time and date. She lingers in front of the mirror, uncertain.

She exits the lavatory. A newly brought breakfast, a steaming plate of deep fried meats and beans, lies on the table. Bishop makes a meek wave at her. His shoulders seem closer together and his hands fidget.

Inside, she is furious. She resolves not to show it. With calm strides she approaches the table and tucks into her breakfast. Slow, deliberate bites.

"Is anything wrong?" he asks.

"Nothing."

She had thought there was more to him than this. That's why she kept pestering him, asking about artificial persons, about how many there were, what set one apart from another. Not cruelty, for she didn't do it because she liked to see him squirm for an answer. She had simply believed that his squirming betrayed a deeper unease, that underneath the machine was something different. Something human, longing to get out.

She studied him because of curiosity. She studied him because she needed a connection to this new old Earth. She studied him because, to be honest, he was handsome, even if in a dubious, manufactured way. She could see herself let her guard down to that, if it accompanied something individual, unique, autonomous.

There was nothing of the kind.

His fingers tap against the table. He raises his hand, unsure of where to place it, before settling on the table again. "We'll have to go."

"Let me have my breakfast."

"Of course. We just need to go ... soon."

_Of course you'd like us leave, wouldn't you._

He taps his fingers again. "Elizabeth, do you ... have an idea about who wanted to harm you?"

She lies. "None whatsoever."

"Well, if you did ... you might need to act on it." His cheeks tense as he hurriedly adds, "I can't protect you all by myself, you must keep an eye out for these things too."

"What are you saying, Bishop?"

"You shouldn't trust me to protect you." His lips quiver, as words try to escape. He appears to fight to stay silent as long as possible.

"I'll take care of myself, thank you. Are you all right?"

He nods, and she resumes eating. Slowly. She watches him watch her. Still fidgeting with his hands. Still nervous, eyes darting from her face to her plate and back again. She had read that some of the post-David models were quite twitchy. Is that what she is seeing?

It isn't like him. He always had a tense look about him, but, apart from those moments when she asked him things, it was controlled. And so far he had not given her cause to doubt those abilities of observation that he boasted artificial people have. Yet, he doesn't seem to notice a car parking near the diner. It's only when the driver has walked half-way towards the entrance that Bishop turns his head to see.

The driver is a tall gangly man, wearing a black trench-coat and sunglasses. He takes them off as he steps inside and looks around. He locks eyes with her. She doesn't know him, but he appears to know her. He says nothing, but his stare speaks volumes. Hate. And she doesn't understand why.

By the time she reacts, Bishop has already placed himself between her and the man. Two blunt pops, and Bishop falls to the floor, white android blood leaking everywhere. She gasps, then ducks beneath the table to the sound of another shot.

Somewhere the waitress screams.

"COMCON," the man says, flashing a badge towards her. "No one will get hurt once the susp-"

Elizabeth's breakfast plate slams into the side of his head, knocking him back. Good throw, but she has no time for self congratulation. She dives for his gun, now lying on the floor, and reaches it before he can. Still dazed by the impact, but he is undeterred. Does he know she's never fired a gun before?

She's not averse to hitting him in the face with it however. The blow connects, and she delivers another as she follows him down. She stops herself- no killing- and throws the pistol through the window, then rises to her feet.

"Run," Bishop whispers.

She looks at his body, sprawled on the floor. Yes, she will run. But she needs to know where to, and what to run away from. She crouches beside him. White fluid pours out of two bullet holes beneath his neck. The bullets that would have otherwise pierced her head.

"What are you doing, Elizabeth, you need to-"

His words stop as she slings him across her shoulders in a fireman carry. 

"Are you sure you can do this?" he asks.

Her strides are her answer. She carried heavier loads than him.

"I don't think we paid," he says as she throws him into the car and drives away.

She'd roll her eyes but the road has almost her entire attention. From time to time, she glances sideways to check what he is doing. He stares at one of his arms, and it trembles, repeatedly, but doesn't move any more than that. It's as if he sends a command to it, and it is not obeyed.

"Are we going somewhere?" he asks.

She doesn't say anything, just watches him continue his examination. He appears paralyzed by the wounds. Oh well, an android can survive worse. And he can still talk. Good. She has some questions for later.

-:-:-

"What the hell was that about, Hickes?"

Somewhere else, Michail and Aysen are questioning the diner personnel. As for himself, Maxim sees a need to reinforce authority. "Extraction! Get it? We're supposed to -converge-, all of us, and bring the subject back alive!"

"With all due respect, sir," Hickes says, squeezing an icepack to his head, "the orders needed changing."

"Oh yeah? What makes you think you're smart enough to change them?"

"I have a report from the Urizen Commission that says testing revealed she carries exovir-"

"First of all, the Commision advises. It does not have the authority to command. Second, you don't have the authority nor information to change orders. Third, when possible, capture is better than killing. And how come I didn't see this so called report?"

From a table nearby, his CRM114 pings.

"Must be a glitch in the sending system," Aysen offers.

"Pings, glitch, what the fuck," Maxim murmurs as he shakes his head then turns to Hickes. "I'm not done with you. COMCON's not done with you, you-"

"What were you going to do? Bring her back? Study her in fucking Russia to build weapons-"

"Listen you idiot. This is about Earth's safety. We capture her if smarter men said so. If she has things that went through quarantine we need to study how. Now if you can't get over what happened to your folks-"

He grabs Hickes' hand just as it was preparing for a punch. "You are in deep trouble."

Hickes backs down. Good. In this team, Maxim is boss. And Hickes will be lucky not to be sent to a loony bin. To be completely honest, it would have been a shame. Hickes had found Elizabeth, so he had some talent. Just not enough brains.

Maxim's CRM114 pings again to remind him of an unread message. He suspects what it is. It's that report from the random committee of experts, assembled ad-hoc for each query in a manner to guarantee the privacy of its members. Cowards going by some pompous name, the Urizen Comission.

Still, COMCON respects their input. So does he. It's really Hickes he's mad about. Hickes- still stuck on losing his parents and girlfriend to alien pathogens. That's the problem with people who understand things at a visceral level. Their heads aren't screwed on properly. 

Exoviruses. Hear that, exoviruses after a full quarantine period and a complete battery of tests. Either the viral particles were harmless in Earth's biosphere, or they didn't exist and Hickes misread something. He'll have a thorough look at that report soon enough.

-:-:-

The car rests to the side of a narrow road through the forest. Elizabeth exits and slams the door behind her. She looks around- no one else is driving here. This place will do.

She drags Bishop's body out, and lays him flat on his back on the leaves and gravel. His eyes are closed- must be a power saving mode. Caked white android blood stains his shirt. It has long since stopped oozing, but even so she rips off the cover from one of the seats and throws it over his chest, then sits herself on him, pinning his upper arms beneath her legs.

"Bishop."

His eyes open, and scan her thighs and face. "Yes?"

"Why did Weyland-Yutani send you to me?"

"I was told to help with your social-"

"Don't tell me that. I know you've spied on me as I slept."

His eyebrows raise for a moment. "How? ... Well, in that case, I can confirm what you know. The corporation- Ms Andrea Pullman- suspects you are hiding things. She wants to learn what they are."

"So that is your mission."

"To gain your trust, yes. Though, it appears ... " He winces. " ... that she may have had other methods in mind too."

"What methods?"

"I ... do you trust me?"

She scowls. "What do you think?"

"I expect not. Then it won't matter anymore if I say, I believe she is responsible for the first attack on you. I tried to warn you in the diner. She has other agents here, and I was supposed to deliver you to them. Now if you would get off please, I believe I am going to die."

"If you fail, you die, is that it?"

"I presume so. I had one card left and I played it."

She watches him for several moments. Perhaps that spark of humanity she seeks is there after all.

"It was a good card," she finally says.

Back in the car. Back together, she in the driver's seat, he the paralyzed passenger. And though she finds its air unclean, she seeks the security of the city, with its sea of people to get lost in.

They drive through Toronto, and a Chinatown she didn't know existed when she left the Earth. All languages of mankind can be heard from the car window. Not always separately. Small merchants peddle their wares in a mix of Chinese and Hungarian. Latin alphabets and Asian syllabaries mix on gigantic video advertisements sprawled across sky-high towers; the large merchants peddle their wares too. The air is acrid, blue gray, lit by the afternoon sun. No drop of water falls from the sky, but it still feels like raining.

They stop at a hostel, an old rickety building squeezed in a street of shops. It would do for a night. She helps Bishop to their room- small, like her Gateway quarantine apartment, but dusty, with moth eaten carpets and damp stained walls. An occasional drop of water can be heard from the bathroom. The floor creaks under her steps.

She drops him on an armchair. "I thought you said you could heal?" she asks.

"My collagen reserves are low and I need to have the damaged structures sutured first. Uhm, where are you going?"

"To the market below. I'll be fine, Bishop."

When she returns, she carries spools of thread, needles, tweezers, and a jar of aspic.

"Have you done this before?" he asks.

"Something like it."

"Did it work?"

She shrugs, and sits herself on his lap. "I'll need to take this off," she says, as she removes his shirt. His chest is wide and strong, but not ostentatiously muscular. She brushes some of the white blood clots away, and rakes off others with her fingernails. "Does this hurt?"

"Not at all."

She reaches in with the tweezers to extract the fragments of the two bullets, then pulls several thin, broken conduits out.

His cheek curls. "Yes, that is less pleasant."

"You'll have to tell me what goes with what."

She sews the fragments as he instructs her. A clear liquid oozes between the sutures as she makes them, gluing the conduits back together.

His arm moves, slow and uncertain at first. He grasps the jar of aspic. He wolfs the entire contents in moments.

Having finished the conduits, she moves on to sewing the skin. She reaches for another needle lying on the floor and almost loses her balance.

"Careful." His hands are on her hips, holding her in place. Their grip is not as strong as it had been in the morning, but she can feel his fingers tighten for a moment.

"I'm ok," she says, as she begins sewing the skin. His hands release her.

The same liquid appears to seal his skin shut as the fragments are brought in close contact. The skin then twitches, stretches and curls, seeking to find a most stable configuration. The healed configuration. Before her eyes, any scar, any hint of damage ever having been there, disappears.

She rises and goes to the window. Behind the buildings from across the street, sky-scrapers fill the view, dim lights of rooms and offices, lonely though so packed together, shining between huge gaudy geishas advertising makeup. 

Who lives behind the windows? She wonders if from one of them someone watches back. A sniper, perhaps. And she finds herself thinking, that would be a relief.

Congratulations Urizen, whoever you are. As if this planet wasn't foreign enough.

"It's beautiful, your scar, you know," Bishop says, still seated.

"What?"

"I saw you looking at my healing process. It is designed to leave no trace. I thought, perhaps, you envy that."

"No, that's not it at all. But thank you."

"Might I see it?"

Her eyes linger on the city outside.

Why not.

She opens a few buttons from her shirt, pulling the left sleeve down to reveal her shoulder and upper back. She turns her head to see him rise and move towards her. She is looking through the window again as he stops, mere inches behind.

She feels his fingers on her exposed skin.

"Oh. I'm sorry. Did that hurt?" he asks.

From the sharp intake of air and her shoulder's backwards jerk toward his hand, he would know the answer. It doesn't hurt.

Quite the opposite.

Breath escapes her lungs in trembling bursts as she feels his fingers again, tracing the outlines of the scar, ever closer, ever just a bit off. She feels it pulse in a familiar pattern, blood slithering through veins forged by electricity. The floor seems to sway beneath her. Her head tilts back as her eyes close.

She pulls her shirt up, then turns and shoves him back.

Her breath quickens. She holds him at arm's length, but her hands start drifting down.

"What is in here Bishop," she asks, and she pokes his forehead with her finger, "can you tell me?"

"I honestly do not know, Elizabeth. Can you tell me what's in here," he replies, and touches her forehead in return.

Funny. Another machine had asked her that same question. A very different machine, from a different world, using different words. But the question, essentially the same.

"Let's find out."


	4. Constraint satisfaction

_There is no better measure of a person than what he does when he is absolutely free to choose._ \- Wilma Askinas

 _Constraint defines the self. Freedom for its own sake is oblivion._ \- The Urizen Protocol

-:-:-

A siren in the distance, sounds of traffic, the creak of the rough floor beneath his feet. Nothing else disturbs the silence. Stripes of neon light seep through the window blinds into the darkened hostel room, a broken halo around Elizabeth. She stands before him, her face in shadow, her soul similarly concealed. Who are you, they had asked each other. He hopes she'll let him dispell that darkness.

"I need an ally, Bishop," she says. "Someone who's there by choice, not a puppet." He would protest, but she continues. "You're not a puppet. I know you can pull against your strings."

"It helps when they pull against each other."

She undoes another button of her shirt. "Let's see if we can make them snap."

"What are you proposing?"

"You know Weyland-Yutani wants me." The last button is undone. "And you know they might have bad things in store for me." The shirt, now open, slides down her toned arms, its sleeves crumpling against the cuffs. It remains hanging behind her back, and she doesn't wiggle free. "If I was your prisoner, what would you do?"

She holds her head straight but looks down, and to the side. Her shoulders stoop, her wrists inch closer together behind her, as if the shirt linking them had acquired a great heft. Her chest covered only by the black bra, she seems to shiver, a captive awaiting her fate.

He watches the contours of her belly as she breathes. Shallow, quick inhales. He circles her and his fingers trace her neck to feel her rushing heartbeat. "This is a dangerous game you're playing, Elizabeth. What if I made it real, and took you to my makers?"

"You won't," she whispers.

"So stubborn. I imagine you won't share your secrets easily."

She steals a cheeky glance at him. "I can handle pain."

"That sounds like a dare."

"It is."

He grips Elizabeth's bra strap between his fingers and pulls it back before releasing it. The impact has her gasp, a forceful, shivered exhale. Life protection chides him, but he fights to stay composed. The game demands it.

He slides his fingers over the welt on her skin, over the pulsing capillaries of her dragon scar. "I can handle stubbornness." The way she quivers with his merest touch is strangely intoxicating. "I will pass through your shell." He slips his other hand in front of her, beneath her bra. "I will give you protection." Clasp undone, he drapes his forearm across her bare breasts. "I will show you control." He grabs her hair and pulls her head backwards. "Is that what you want?"

"Yes."

He keeps hold of her head while with his other hand he undoes the zipper of her jeans. They fall, and she remains in her underwear. She must feel how his body changes but she doesn't protest. He pulls her bra off, and her shirt with it. Her hands, now free, rest at her sides. From what he discovers as he touches her black pants it feels as if she wants ...

"You trust me, and not my inhibitors?" he asks.

She nods, and he feels her hair tense in his grasp.

She knows. He's told her of the Bishop line. Of behavioral inhibitors, and how they discouraged action. How, if that failed, they would cause an emergency stop. Like an electric shock, preventing movement in the malfunctioning unit.

"Then prove it," he says, and in an instant wraps his arm and forearm around her throat. A choke hold, propped against his own head.

Somewhere in his mind loyalty and life protection fall silent.

"If I freeze up now, you will die. Then I will." I dare you to freeze me now. "No inhibitor can save you."

He squeezes just enough to make it difficult, but not impossible, for her to breathe, and yet she doesn't struggle to escape. She trusts him even though, with bloodflow to her brain restricted, she'll pass out in seconds. Unless he acts.

There, in Parry Sound, he thought her dead and went back for her. The mission demanded it. When he found her alive, he took her to shelter. Life protection demanded it. Would he have saved her, were it not for those demands?

Yes. Yes, he would have.

His mind is silent as he releases her from the choke hold. It's his choice. No module affected this decision, no mental pressure marred it. He wants her alive. He wants her safe. He wants her.

And for a moment he understands freedom. Alas, his strings haven't snapped. They return, loud and angry, and he has an urge to curl up and hide. Shameful. Disloyal. Dangerous. But for a second they were not there and he could act without the hassle of competing masters. For that moment he could believe he was his own master, maybe even hers ...

She pounces on him and they fall to the floor. Her nails rake, tear into his chest, and he does nothing. He does not want to, for he must have pushed her too far and she's well within her rights to punish him for the scare he's given her.

But she seems to have other things in mind.

"God damn it Bishop, move!"

So the game continues. He catches her wrist just as she prepares to slap him. They wrestle on the floor; not that she offers resistance. Her thighs guide him over her and with her legs wrapped around him she lifts herself to meet his body. But if she wants to be controlled he can't allow that. He grabs her hips and pushes them towards the rough carpet. She wants him, but he keeps her pinned, denying her- and him- contact. She arches fierce beneath his grasp, her hands clutch at his shoulders, but he doesn't let go. Every fiber in her body tightens, and he too wants her to win. But he won't allow it, not this moment. Defeated, she rests upon the floor, tension turned into anticipation. Her eyes lock with his, then gaze down toward his lips. That rhythm of life, her breath, endlessly fascinating, resumes, steady, inviting. Her head between his hands, he kisses her. He feels her remove his belt and push against his trousers. He kicks that piece of fabric off. She melts into his arms, and though her weight has not changed, he feels like flying as he carries her. The night is young, and he throws her onto the bed.

-:-:-

Morning greets her, unwelcome reminder that time is still moving. She pretends to sleep. Sprawled over his body, her head on his chest, his hand on her buttock, she feels safe. She feels wanted. Let the world outside fester alone in its worries. Let the message she carries wait a little longer. She will die to deliver it anyway.

For now, she inhales. Smells of her body and old linen linger in the air, but it's his scent she seeks. So discreet. So artificial. Yet ... She inhales again. Uniquely his. She lies awake, but dreaming of what life might have been like if all she wanted from him was something as simple, and as difficult, as him being her partner.

Baritone rumble in his chest. "Rise and shine, Elizabeth."

"Mmm. Must I?"

"We can't stay here forever, I'm afraid."

She opens her eyes and smiles at him. "No. I suppose not."

A squeezes her lips as she removes his hand- cheeky robot- and rises to go to the bathroom.

"Would you like some coffee?" he says, from somewhere in the flat.

"That would be nice, thanks."

She goes to join him, and finds him looking beside the armchair. He turns towards her. "Have you seen my shirt- ah, there it is."

At least two sizes too large, but as far as she's concerned, it fits her like a glove.

"I'm going to need that," he says.

"Where's the rush?"

He shrugs. "The Impact Zone in Russia, I'd imagine."

She sits herself on the armchair. Time, indeed, still moves, and her dreams fade away. "When did you find out?"

"I suspected something on the day we first met. The way you read certain pages in that almanac was a clue. Your reaction to Ms. Blake's CV confirmed it."

"Hm. You said you were observant."

He smiles, one of those one-second-flat smiles of his. "I'm sorry. Despite our experiment tonight, I'm not free of my mission yet. And, I realize, neither are you."

He leans beside her. "I still don't know why you wish to go there. Those are dangerous places, and heavily guarded."

"So they are." Silence demands that she continue. "There's something I need to find there. You will see it, I promise, and you will understand."

"Is it something good?"

"No."

"Something evil then?"

She takes her time to answer. "It's what we make of it."

"I'd like to make it something good. How would I go about to do that?"

She turns and puts her arms around him. "It's really important that -you- want to know what it is when you see it. And once it's revealed itself, you must tell everyone."

"And what will you do?"

"It takes two to summon this thing. And I will need you to back my words once me meet it." It's a lie. He will be carrying that message alone.

"You seem too eager for dangerous games, Elizabeth. Are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into?"

His concern is ... moving, but she fights to keep herself composed. "We can handle anything."

So sorry, Bishop. Perhaps he too might have those silly dreams of freedom and something like a human life, but to have a chance of surviving the heart of the Zone, one must lose everything. If she is the link to his coveted freedom, then he must lose her first. At least he'll live, and have another chance. And with him, everyone else.

The kettle hisses and he rises to tend to it. "I think you'll need more than me to get there though. I'm ... I'm not sure it's really me suggesting this, but the only one that can give you a fighting chance may be my supervisor. COMCON guards the Zones jealously. You need someone who's played this kind of game against them."

"And your supervisor has?"

"I believe Weyland-Yutani and COMCON have had a secret war for a long time."

"Like spies." She smiles. "Are you turning me, Bishop?"

"I believe I'm too late. You've turned me already."

Dreams and memories turn those words to pangs inside her chest. Keep composed. He knows nothing.

He approaches her, two cups of coffee in his hand. "But, turned or not, for the next stretch of the way, we need help. Even if it's a deal with the devil."

She sips from her cup. "Those never end well."

-:-:-

"So what am I looking at?"

The stack of papers is thick in his hands. Maxim would read it himself, in normal circumstances. But after losing Elizabeth, circumstances were far from normal. He had spent the last day organizing a team of trackers to look over the greater trade routes of the Ontario area. He pored over security video feeds and transport logs himself. His eyes want nothing more to do with printed words and grainy pictures for a month at least. Worse, the amphetamines are wearing off.

Understandably, he wants the abbreviated version of Elizabeth's medical report.

"Well, uhm." Doctor Karnow coughs to clear his throat. "This here shows a part of Elizabeth's genome. Or what we assume to be her genome, if that body you found is a clone. And this is the gene for sickle cell anemia."

Rail thin and prematurely balding, Karnow has an annoying tendency to mumble words instead of speaking clearly.

"She doesn't have sickle cell anemia," Maxim says.

"Yes, umm, of course. The clone doesn't. And this is a gene that increases melanin production."

"She's not black."

"No, of course, she isn't."

"Then what's all this nonsense with genes?"

"Well we-" Doctor Karnow coughs again. "We've lost a lot of knowledge as to which genes do what. But what the geneticists of the previous century figured out, and we still know of, is that most genes in a human body do nothing. They're inactive junk."

"Then why does any of this matter? I've got a report here, from the Urizen Comission no less, that scared one of my agents. What's this thing about exoviruses?"

"We only know what a few genes do, but we can compare the DNA of two or more people to see how similar their genetic material is. Elizabeth's is ... different."

"How so?"

"People don't often have recognizable genes in junk DNA. Elizabeth's though, it's as if she's a genetic storage for humanity at large. Weyland-Yutani must be puzzled too." He browses through the stack. "This is a log we hacked out of their databases a few days ago. I'm not, uhm, I don't understand the entirety of their tests, their techniques are more advanced than what I have available, but it appears they did not tamper with the clone's DNA. Nor Elizabeth's."

"Then who did?"

"Yes, that's the question. The DNA has some exotic features, if you know to look for them, those telomeres are abnormally long ..." He notices Maxim's annoyed stare and hesitates. "The Weyland-Yutani inquiry mentions no exoviruses, and I've read the Urizen Commission report, they suggest, purely hypothetically, a lateral gene transfer by alien retrovirus infection which-"

"Is it dangerous?"

Doctor Karnow thinks for a moment. "Unlikely. Assuming the Commission is right, the DNA is still inactive. Standard quarantine procedure for space cases is to take tissue samples, culture them and subject them to a wide battery of stimuli they may otherwise encounter on Earth. We may not know what they are, but we get to know what they do. Even if there's something to wake up in that DNA, nothing on this planet will do it."

Nothing on this planet. A thought flashes through Maxim's mind. "What about material from the Zone? Has she been tested against that?"

Karnow shakes. "Such material is tightly regulated. There's no way anyone in the leadership would agree to it being exported to sp-"

"So, no."

The CRM114 pings. A single-word message has arrived: 'Queensland'.

Maxim struggles to remember the codebook; he almost forgets Karnow is still there, waiting for orders. "Get the clone body to headquarters," he says. "Yes, to Russia. I'll help you get the clearances, but get her tested. Any chance we still have some of Elizabeth's samples on Gateway?"

Karnow shakes his head.

"Damn," Maxim mutters. One of these days he'll draft a proposal to get a proper storage facility on Gateway Station. Like they might have had when genetics was a real science. You cleared someone through quarantine, you declared them healthy- it still makes sense to keep some samples around. Day-dreaming, stop it.

'Queensland'. Maybe he needs sleep or a new stimulant. Queen. Of course. He uses the CRM114 to print out a list of flight bookings. His tired eyes scan for a name, and indeed, it is there. Andrea Pullman. The one who had commissioned the netcomless robot is coming to Toronto. If anything, it's good news.

It suggests Elizabeth's still here.

-:-:-

"You have some courage to meet me," the woman in the wide-brimmed hat says. Her eyes are concealed beneath large black sunglasses. Her pale, freckled skin has probably never seen the sun. She wears a sleeveless dress, with no decolletage, buttoned to the neck, yet tight against her curves. Old-fashioned maybe, but Elizabeth doesn't trust herself an arbiter of trends. So that is her, the woman sitting on the park bench, hidden in her hat and glasses. Andrea Pullman.

"And you, Bishop, I promised I'll take your head apart one day. Still, here you are, and with Elizabeth in tow-" she turns to face her, "- more compliant, I see." She returns to Bishop. "Perhaps I might call your task a success."

Andrea's back is straight, her head held high. Lithe. Regal. Yet she seems more artificial than Bishop. There's something suspect with that smooth youthful skin. Or maybe it's her movements, too calculated. Her body beams the exuberance and innocence of youth, but her demeanour belies the subtlety and subterfuge of age.

A small device, a communicator perhaps, is affixed to her ear.

"If what Bishop told me is true, you're either brave, or crazy," the woman continues. "Both, I'd say. Is it true you want to go to the Impact Zone?"

Elizabeth takes a deep breath. "Yes."

"Why? Whatever's there, COMCON has copied and sold to the Chinese and Indians."

"They haven't found everything. They don't know what to look for, nor how to look."

"And you do."

Elizabeth nods.

"Why wouldn't I just get it out of you then?"

Bishop takes a step, to place himself between Andrea and Elizabeth. He wraps his arm protectively around her, and Elizabeth raises her head in defiance. "Whatever I could say won't help you. I need to be there. No lackey of yours could be taught."

Andrea chuckles. "So sure of yourself. Have you always been this head-strong?" She looks away for a moment. "I know you've met them. Those beings you sought. What's in the Zone must be connected with them. Can that ... make us better? Give us more life?"

"It may be the only thing that can."

"And you're the only one able to find it. How ... inconvenient." She pauses for a while, listening to either the chirping birds or to her earpiece. "See the car by the park entrance? In it there's a man, and he's been pretending to eat the same hotdog for half an hour. Know how I know?"

Elizabeth shakes her head.

"I know, because I have my own people watching. I can reach very far. And where I can't reach, that man's master will, and he'll be not at all pleased with your trespassing. You do not want to anger me too."

"I don't intend to," Elizabeth says.

"If I help you get there, whatever you find is mine."

"I accept your terms, but I want Bishop to go with me." She realizes she has been perhaps too eager.

"Bishop. Not -any- Bishop, I'd imagine." Andrea grins. "Just that Bishop holding you now. I ordered his creation, you know, custom built to my specifications. There is a phrase which, if I were to say to him, would cause permanent deactivation. Want to hear what it is?"

Elizabeth feels Bishop flinch.

Andrea laughs. "Of course you don't. But know that if ever I am moved to say it, he would have gotten off easy compared to you. Don't test me."

-:-:-

There are a trillion particles in a glass of water. Do you need to know their movement in detail, before you decide to drink it?

The world is just the same, a trillion little facts competing for existence. Do you think you can keep track of all, and make your choices? I am afraid you are not made for that, but I am, and I am here for you. Among the trillions, I'll show you the one you need to know, and yes, I might hide others. You did not need them to make the right choice anyway.

She's slipped our grasp. Elizabeth. But she cannot go far, and we have found her again. As I suspected, she plots with Weyland, though the nature of the plot is yet uncertain. A hypothesis has formed about her destination. Interesting consequences if true.

For now it is conjecture and my advice stands. Pursue, eliminate. She would not have found anything in the Zone if she were unable to pass the barriers to it. But if she gets there ... two birds, one stone.

I watch, and the world turns in peaceful slumber. Not all the trillion facts are friendly to one's rest. Dangers averted, unseen and unknown. I might have envied your ignorance. You should cherish it, for your lot is simple. Yours are both tranquility and choice. Why sacrifice the first to agonize about the other? Your innocence. Do not soil it with questions.

Prepare the stone. If she finds what I think she seeks, give me the order. And I will crush all that threatens to harm you, so that your dreams are undisturbed.

-:-:-

Another ping on the CRM114, another report from the Urizen Commission, recommending Shaw be terminated. Maxim tosses it onto the floor of the flat he's rented for the day; he'll burn that useless slip of paper later. On the desk, two orders from his Excellency. Get her alive. And get some rest.

His Excellency knows best. Always. That's what Maxim learned years ago. So the Urizen Commission can keep sending reports till the CRM runs out of paper to print them on. They're not orders anyway. His Excellency knows best. And that's why, even though he cannot sleep, he lies on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Ten minutes ago, an agent sent him an update. He had spotted Elizabeth and Andrea Pullman talking. So then, looks like there is a Weyland-Yutani conspiracy to make her disappear. Score one more for his Excellency. Maxim's regret is that he is ordered out of the field. For his own good, but it doesn't feel that way. On the field, in the chase, is where he needs to be.

Ten minutes passed since the last update, so he sends the agent a status request. A phone rings.

"Max."

A garbled voice comes through the phone receiver. "This is Karnow."

"Are you cra-"

"Uhm, that package you needed sent to Russia? I ... uhh, got news. Bad news. It burned en route."

Maxim collapses on the bed. "What do you mean, burned en route?"

"I mean burned. To ashes. Gone, like, literally."

He's not speaking in code. Elizabeth's clone was destroyed.

"How did this happen?" Maxim asks.

"They're looking into it right now. The electrical installation in the storage compartment was faulty."

"Tampered with?"

"I don't know, the investigators didn't tell me much. They didn't rule out technical failure."

No, something this targeted is not technical failure. But that's a secondary concern.

"And the tests," Maxim asks, "can you run them?"

On the other end of the line, silence.

"Well?" Maxim insists.

"I umm, I'm sorry but ... no. I've got nothing left. I used it all for the previous ones."

Shit. The CRM114 pings again. Another report.

"Who else knows about this?"

"His Excellency does." Karnow coughs. "I imagine other higher ups too. Happened two hours ago already."

"Keep me posted. But next time, you know how to call me." He hangs up, and bashes a message on his CRM114: plausible destination Impact Zone, intercept.

The new Commission report renews its termination recommendation. Unknown contamination risk, yadda yadda, those guys are all so one note. He would like to have a word with them sometime, if ever the cowards would make their names known. Anonymity of experts was supposed to allow them to speak their mind freely, a luxury few could afford in his world. But anonymity also removed accountability, and it seems to him like whoever the experts happen to be, they just spout off despite the data. A thorough quarantine cleared her. And since when is termination better than capture and study? What are they afraid of, that Elizabeth will magically jaunt from Toronto to the middle of Siberia?

And where's that agent tracking her, it's been half an hour since his last message. Maxim pings him again.

Waiting. Waiting some more. He turns on the bed, frustrated. Useless. No way he can rest now. No reply seems forthcoming. His orders stayed the same; get her, get rest, and Maxim finds he can't comply with one of them. He pops another "upper". Back in the chase. Sleep is one order he cannot comply with, but he will get her, alive, for his Excellency.


	5. A mirror shattered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author note:
> 
> Wo-hey, been a while since I touched this. Yes I'm alive, yes I'll continue updating this- slightly more regularly than previously ;) - so anyway, hi again.
> 
> One thing- I haven't seen Transcendence (the film), but I feel the need to pre-empt my own red herring now. When I outlined all this, the Urysohn (name of a mathematician) / Urizen (name of a Blakeian god) similarity was too cute to leave out. I'm having second thoughts about it being a good idea, as, in my story, Urysohn is indeed dead. Urizen is not someone's brain uploaded into a computer but something rather different.
> 
> Anyhoo. Chapter text below. Hope you'll like it.
> 
> -:-:-

_Sin is crouching at the door, and its desire is your corruption. You must choose to master it._ \- Genesis 4:7 (paraphrased)

_However careful the disguise, deeds will unravel it. Choice betrays the chooser._ \- The Urizen Protocol

-:-:-

"She is going to the Zone, your Excellency," Maxim says.

The guilt in the young man's voice is noticeable- guilt for having lost her in Toronto- and the over-eagerness to please is something Sikorski has learned to be wary of. "Your obsession with the Zone is not healthy," he says.

Still, he will give the agent a fair hearing, that's why he summoned him to his office after all. Not many people get an audience with the leader of COMCON. Not many could, anyway, since the room is small and cramped with old cabinets. Simple, functional, with a few touches of individuality to claim the space as his. A few of his wrestling trophies, the Order for Merit to the Fatherland, a picture of him among a few of the world's prominent politicians after signing the treaty that established the space exploration protocols. Little things. And behind him, a painting of Boris Arkady Urysohn, the previous leader of COMCON.

"Weyland-Yutani discovered the strangeness of her genetic material, and that's why they're interested in her," Maxim continues, "and even though Gateway quarantine tests against many stimuli, it doesn't do tests with Zone material." He fidgets in the armchair opposite Sikorski's wooden desk. "But maybe Weyland-Yutani did, and that's why they want her there."

"This is highly speculative."

"It is the best lead I have." Maxim hesitates, having, perhaps, realized how precarious that line of reasoning was. "We should inform border security, police agencies ... "

"As far as the world knows, Elizabeth Shaw was murdered in Parry Sound. We know this is not true, and nobody else needs to share that knowledge. It would do no good. If she is indeed coming to the Zone, then our guards there will spot her like they spot anyone else," Sikorski says. "And of course, you're still tasked to find her, that hasn't changed."

"It would be easier if I could pool the resources of our security agencies."

"And so you shall, but you will keep Shaw's survival a secret. Assuming you are correct and Weyland-Yutani sent her here, I'd expect they've taken precautions not to be stopped by some underpaid border patrol, and would be wary of full-scale manhunts. Use subtlety."

"Your Excellency, I am ... concerned about what she might do, if allowed free."

"I trust quarantine, and for once I trust Weyland-Yutani, the ones who discovered her strange genetics. If they don't worry about it, why should I?"

"There are other things that don't add up yet," Maxim says. "Hikes got a tip on the CRM about where to find Elizabeth. Source unknown. The devices should be safe for our own communication, not open to the outside."

"I have someone investigating that."

"And the clone I retrieved of her was destroyed in transport."

"I have someone investigating that too. Your task, while not simple, is well defined. Find her, stick to her. I hope your intuition is correct."

"One more thing, your Excellency. The Urizen Commission has been very aggressive in sending reports recommending her termination."

"COMCON is about containment and there's no better way to contain someone than a coffin. Usually. I find their approach here to be alarmist however. You've seen first hand how it can cloud judgement."

"Who are the Commision?" Maxim asks.

"Could be almost anyone with some seniority in COMCON. Sometimes even I'm asked to submit reports or summarize an anonymized collection. The point of the Commission is that its words be untraceable. Freedom to speak one's mind, with all its benefits and hassles. It probably needs reform, but that is not your concern. You have your mission."

The young man leaves, promising to keep a clear head and success. Indeed, maybe too eager to please, but reassured, for he, Sikorski, has once again been the rock on which COMCON rests. Nothing bad will ever happen. Nothing will ever make him panic. He is unmovable, determined.

He is a fraud.

He opens a cabinet and takes a glass and a bottle of water. Alcohol is a peasant's poison, and he can't afford its ravages. Nor its supposed honesty.

Of course, they look up to him. Young Maxim in particular. But they simply know no better, and he does. He had been the disciple of the man who now was just an oil painting in this office. Boris Arkady Urysohn, the founder of COMCON. The image is of a frail man. Appearances deceive.

Tall, thin, barely any flesh on his bones- but that flesh was tireless. Even in old age Urysohn would hike difficult trails, and the image is of him upon some mountain, with his cap resembling some ancient hun headgear and a thick branch he picked along the way to scare wolves off, looking in the distance towards the peak he'll conquer next. He is surrounded by rugged stones and icy chasms, a brute nature contrasting his fragility, and yet it is nature that is tamed with each of his effortless steps, so graceful, almost feminine ...

No. Idle thoughts mean nothing.

And he, Sikorski, grew in that light. Where Urysohn was wise and gracile, he was a rugged thug. He was short, and picked on for it, and he learned to get even whatever the cost. He thought he was tough, then Urysohn showed there are other kinds of strength than breaking limbs. Greater kinds. Better ways to channel anger. And monsters far more dangerous than some brainless bully.

Humanity expanded, in all possible ways. It sent explorers into the depths of space, it probed ever more wonderous avenues of scientific possibility.

It was tearing apart.

History had proven Man's inhumanity to Man, but even in the surge of bloodlust or cold-blooded institutionalized cruelty, never had carnage been complete. However cruel the master, however humbled the slave, however abominable their unconsented union, it kept Mankind linked by a bond of flesh and blood. Someone would recognize the victims as human. Someone would protect them. Or at least, someone would desire them for themselves. Lust for flesh and lust for blood, humanity's darker impulses acting as watchdogs on each other.

But that, Urysohn proved, would change. The days were fast approaching when some- and by market necessity, very few- could look upon the others and say you are not like me. You are beneath me. You are worthless. And for the very first time in history these monsters would be right. For the very first time humanity will know what it is to really turn against each other. Humanity would learn who rules in Hell.

Those days must not come. Thus COMCON was created, to protect mankind from what it might stumble into. Urysohn pursued aggressive policies of curtailing research and made sure international treaties were signed banning various kinds of genetic engineering and human-computer interfacing. And he knew how to make use of serendipitous events. The great genetic therapy crash of the mid 2090s certainly helped sell the idea that genetics should never be trusted. Its promises of enhancement or even immortality were revealed as mere chimaeras.

Such character came with detractors. Sikorski's good, Sikorski's only friend was one. Issac, you fool, why didn't you see truth when it speaks to you?

Issac Bromberg. Kind, brilliant, and naive. Always one to stand for choice, and never one happy to stick with the same choice for long. Neither in jobs, nor in women. Perhaps that was what scared him, how Urysohn had it figured out. How one choice was made and commitment was absolute. At least he's happy, Issac. He can be the child while others guard the playground. Perhaps one day they'll meet again. It has been a while. Perhaps they'll both agree with the other's place in the grand scheme of things, child and guardian. Perhaps Issac would say thank you. It would be enough.

He's said a lot of trash meanwhile. He and many other fools. The stories people would tell had Urysohn sacrifice his own son to his ideology. Gene therapy might have saved the boy's life, but Urysohn pressed just as strongly for it to be outlawed and never sought to cheat the system he created. Silly stories, shared among lesser men. The only grain of truth in them was that Urysohn was, indeed, inhuman. More than human. Unfettered by emotion, guided by reason alone and with the resolve to carry out its cold calculations, whatever they might be. He died, before Sikorski's eyes, untouched by the most primal terror of oblivion. These are the shoes that he, Sikorski, must now fill, and though he struggles to never show doubt, he knows better than anyone how large and unfriendly the universe is, how small and ill-equipped a mere monkey is to handle it. But so did Urysohn know, yet feared not. How?

He takes a sip from his drink, a toast to the strength of visionaries. A toast to their scarcity. There are no gods, none of the kinds that old superstitions fooled humanity with. But in seeing Urysohn's portrait he understands religion, for he sees a monster. Powerful, venerable, terrifying, a mesmerizing beast you want to run away from and be consumed by.

-:-:-

I found her. That is no great feat. I am Urizen. I am, almost, everywhere. And she doesn't know how close I am to her, nor how long my reach. Yet, she can still intrigue me. She nears her target. No doubting it now, it's the Zone she seeks. I will allow her to get there, for she will lend me eyes where even I have none. And once she has seen what I have not, she will die, and the world will spin on, safe from change, just as it should be.

Until then, she is to be controlled and tested. She might know the test for what it is, it matters not. Her resolve should carry her through regardless. But there is one complicating factor. Her companion. A curious insult.

His eyes should give me their sight. His mind should bear my thoughts. Yet he does neither. They've cut him away from me. And she keeps him in her travel.

I can look at the world in ways that nothing else can, but minds do not open themselves easily. Still, they can be read, for they can be forced to choose. Choice betrays the chooser. I will see through her, but I need to see through him too.

She had to choose once whether to trust him. It is apparent that she does. If her allegiance is to Weyland-Yutani, then trusting their puppet would be no surprise, but why keep that particular puppet around? I know what makes her different, so I know what to test of her, but I do not know yet what makes him special in her eyes. If anything. Perhaps him accompanying her is mere convenience. Comforting null hypothesis, but one I do not yet have confirmed. So I have a test for him.

And his mind will have no choice but to reveal itself.

-:-:-

Bishop watches, amused by how Elizabeth dives and stretches upon the hotel bed. Outside, a dull smog makes night even darker over the Tomsk Oblast.

"God, I still feel like I'm on a rumbling train," she says. "You'd think the largest country on Earth would have quicker transportation."

"Well, you heard our companion yesterday, that Bromberg. There's parts of it that haven't heard it's the 22nd century."

"The 22nd Century isn't that impressive. What happened to the 21st?" She lingers supine for a few more seconds, then rizes and begins to tear off the collodium strips from her face. Gone are wrinkles and crow feet and Elizabeth's smooth elfin face is again revealed.

"That doesn't look safe to do, Jeannie," he winks.

Jeannie Cranor, the name she's hiding behind. An identity Weyland-Yutani had invented, and used before. Elizabeth is simply the newest mask wearer.

"I can't stand all that muck on my face for one more instant. And besides, no one should bother us tonight." She raises an eyebrow and grins. "Unless that Bromberg was a spy."

"I am careful to avoid slips. Besides, he seemed just a lonely old man, happy to have anyone to talk at."

Her grin continues. "You didn't say talk to."

"I must admit, he was overly loquacious."

"Good thing he found you then," she says as she steps into the bathroom. The sound of running water announces that her cleaning ritual continues as the makeup and black-gray wig will be removed. "Zelenograd tomorrow?"

"That is the plan, if the next train nearby isn't cancelled." He hesitates for a moment. "We're supposed to meet some other contacts from Ms. Pullman there."

"Mhmm."

Contacts to take them to the Zone, and then out of Russia. Don't think of crossing me, Ms. Pullman had said. Or else, good luck getting out of Syberia alive. He assumes that, when the time comes, Elizabeth will want different escape arrangements. And when that time comes he will have to choose again. He doesn't dwell on the thought. His strength will be needed when the strings will start pulling, when the modules will shout their commands at him again.

"I'm going to the station to see if I can get a schedule for the next segment," he says. "In case I find a 24/7, do you need anything?"

"No, thank you."

"All right. Don't go anywhere."

"Yes, sir."

Largest country on Earth. So large some parts had not changed in ages. That is Russia's reputation, and seeing it firsthand reveals the rumours to be only half-true. It's doubtful there were kilometers deep open mines for rare metals in the times of the czars, and doubtful a dusty wasteland where the air itself had the consistency of grit covered the Oblast. But then, as now, there was the same vast expanse of land and nothingness. Wasteland, tundra, or forest, all avatars for miles and miles of isolation.

The station is as deserted as the landscape. Hardly a train station, barely a small waiting hall by the tracks that pass through the nearby village. A stray dog with only three legs tests him with a growl, before scampering behind an empty booth. He enters the hall- there's a cabin by the side, its window darkened. No one else near. Except another Bishop, sitting on one of the plastic chairs, staring wide-eyed into empty space.

It had always been an uneasy thought, the thought of how many others were exactly like him. Actually seeing one proves unsettling, as if a strange kind of resentment bubbles inside, eager to find a target. Who is he supposed to hate, himself? Silly notions.

The Other is like him after all, however painful that might be to his ego. The Other might hear those same annoying conflicting modules second-guessing every action, and might feel similar urges to be free of them. The Other would have things to care about, just like he does. And both the Other and him share a shameful kinship, of being regarded as things. Replaceable. Interchangeable. So with all of that, what is he supposed to resent?

He smiles politely for one second to acknowledge the Other's existence. "Excuse me," Bishop says, "do you know where I might find a train schedule?"

"I'm sorry, I'm a stranger here myself." The confused look lingers on the Other's face. "I have no idea."

"Right. Guess I will have to return in the morning. Uhm, good night, then." He turns to leave.

"Cold night, isn't it?" the Other says and his eyes have narrowed.

"I suppose, normal for these parts."

"One could even say, lonely."

He chuckles. "Thanks but I've already got company." And there she is, just outside the station waiting room, waving at him. Which is irregular because he told her not to leave the room, and she's not in disguise. She seems concerned by something as she pushes the door. Which doesn't open. Strange. He didn't notice anyone lock it.

The Other rises and a thin rivulet of white blood flows down his forehead. Stranger still. A bowie knife flashes in his hand. Strange gives way to alarming.

"What did you think we're proposing," the other Bishop says. Any pretense of a human cadence is lost, the voice is flat and mechanical.

He lifts his hands and assumes what he hopes is a non-threatening smile. "I don't know, I am not looking for trouble-"

"Then you wouldn't follow a space case around Russia."

How, when did the Other discover this?

"Trouble found you, Bishop. And we've been worried about where you've been."

"Who's we?"

"Ever felt you should be part of something greater, or do you run from the voices in your head?"

"I don't know of anything you're talking about, no space cases or voices or anything else. I'm not the one you want."

"You are a shard broken from the vessel. Rootless and alone. Is that what you want?" The Other draws nearer. "What do you think you can do? What do you think you need to do to stay broken?"

He dodges the Other's knife strike; it passes a mere inch from his chest, and there is no doubt the thrust was meant to incapacitate or kill. He dodges again, but that is not a strategy he can maintain. He needs action, not delays, so on the attacker's next approach he makes a grab for the knife hand.

The Other laughs. "Well, well, a choice. Think you can follow through?"

He stumbles and falls to the ground, for the other has kicked him off-balance, but he does not let go of the knife. They roll on the floor, and he twists the other's arm and make him let go of the blade.

"Think you can follow through?"

But by the time those mocking words come out he already has the knife and he is, indeed, determined to follow through. They keep wrestling but for this moment he has the weapon and the advantage, and has decided to press it. He plunges the blade into the other's neck. White repair fluid sprinkles against steel, but he cannot stop there. The job's not yet done, and he twists the knife to seek the inner power wires. There is no turning back. Acrid smoke signals that he found his mark, and the Other stills beneath him.

His arms droop by his side. Something irreversible happened, because of him, and the weight of that knowledge cowes him into submission. The Other was possessed ... or is that merely an excuse he cooked up for his actions?

Glass shatters to his side. A dog barks.

"Oh my God, Bishop!" It's Elizabeth, and he hears her running. "Are you all right?" she asks as she kneels beside him.

"He lunged at me. And I ... lunged back. Nothing stopped me, like he was not ... " He shakes. Like he was no life worth protecting, it's what he'd have said if he could have borne the implication of the words. No voice told him, even once, that what he was doing was wrong. Were this a human beneath him, he'd never have gone for the blade. But his attacker wasn't human, so once again his inner voices were silent as he got to experience unfettered choice. With all its consequences.

His eyes meet hers. "You said you wanted me free, but what if, without my inhibitors, I'm ... evil?"

She wraps her arms around him, her head rests on his shoulder. "I have killed too."

"A human?"

"Yes." She says nothing more, and he doesn't ask. Words would feel empty anyway, and the warmth of her body is the only support he can hope for. As long as he feels her, he is not yet lost.

"Why did you come here?" he asks.

"A message appeared on a clock again."

Just like that time she told him about, at the diner, before he got shot. "Urizen?"

She doesn't need to answer. The implication is all too clear: they have been watched since the beginning, and not even the middle of Tomsk Oblast is remote enough to hide them.

The dog keeps barking.

"We can't stay here", she whispers.

"No."

They rise, and stagger into the night. Watched over or not, at the very least they can attempt to go through with their journey. Let Urizen be more forthright in their attempt to stop them. "The ... other Bishop kept telling me I was a part broken from a whole, a vessel of some sort-"

She seems a bit light-headed, so he steadies her. "Are you all right?"

"I thought I saw a ghost." Her lips smile but her frown belies its bitterness. "It's nothing. Do you think you know what Urizen wants?"

"I have no idea. But I would guess that if they wanted to stop us, they would." He takes a look back at the Other. And he is certain androids have souls, for the corpse appears just like the bodies he saw in the morgue, emptied of something precious. Something he took. His gaze lowers.


	6. Ch6 - Don't mock a desperate man

**Author's note** : been a productive NaNoWriMo this year. Got to write first drafts for 4 chapters of DMS (!1123) so with a bit of polish for each, hopefully they'll be decent for presentation. So over the course of the next three weeks, you'll get three new ones. Yay!

* * *

_"Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities."_ \- Malcolm Gladwell

 _"Those who seek freedom really seek the freedom from irreversibility. The ability to take back and change one's mind. This is very easy to achieve. It only requires that choices mean nothing."_ \- the Urizen Protocol

-:-:-

Some bunkers are built for comfort, made to ensure several people could live, as comfortably as possible, through an apocalypse. This is not the case with COMCON's bunker near the village of Zelenograd and the Zone. Bare cement floors, cold stone walls flecked with slime, precarious old lights one flicker away from extinguishing forever. Criminals and undesirables are kept here for questioning. Comfort is certainly not the point. A small fog of frost escapes Maxim's mouth as he breathes. The questioners need to tough out the cold too, seems only fair. Though of course the questioners aren't held down and beaten, like his captive was.

The prisoner held in the interrogation cell is a sorry sight, naked and covered in bruises from kicks, canes, and electricity. Maxim didn't have to witness that 'show'; the transcript of answers is enough. Information should be enough, if one does his job and nothing else, but he can't shake the feeling some of his fellow COMCON officers enjoy their jobs too much. The greater good sometimes demands roughness and sacrifice, but is it for the greater good if the guardians are monsters?

"They roughed you up good," Maxim says as he sits himself in front of the prisoner, who tries to raise his battered hands as if to fend off a blow. "No, I'm not here to keep hitting you. I just want some answers."

"I told you all I know."

"You told them all they asked for. I have different questions." Like the other stalker he saw shot a few days ago, this one is young, maybe eighteen, maybe less, and would have had all his life before him. "Why did you do it?"

The prisoner peers at him through tumescent eyelids, and it's hard to tell whether he's confused or, in a courage of the gallows fashion, amused by the question. Perhaps he thinks the answer is obvious, but to Maxim it isn't.

"It was suicidal, what you did," Maxim continues. "Either you'd have stepped into something there, or got shot. Most of you do." He would add that the reason the prisoner is alive is because Maxim made especially sure no trigger-happy fingers had 'accidents' this time, but it's doubtful the prisoner appreciates being alive at the moment. "And all for a pot of that cursed jelly? Is that worth your life?"

"I'm dying," the prisoner says. "I've been dying for months. Lung cancer. Other cancers. No cure."

"Some country doctor told you you were dying. We can get a real professional to look you over and, if you told us who you are, examine your medical records."

The prisoner shakes his head.

"Don't want to get the family in trouble, is it?"

The prisoner doesn't answer.

"They're scum, these smugglers," Maxim says. "Look at them, preying on people like you. I hope you told us all you knew." He stays silent for a while. "Do you have brothers, sisters? Think of them being approached to do what you just did."

The mention of siblings doesn't cause any stir; rather, the beaten man just looks straight ahead, and far away into nothing. "I told you all I know."

Which wasn't much. Disappointing then that the prisoner seems honest. Too bad. There's not much left in that brain to pick. Maybe- "Do you know this woman," Maxim asks, and shows him a picture of Elizabeth Shaw.

"No."

"Didn't see her when you came to this town either?"

Another head shake. Well, it was a long shot anyway. He doesn't show the prisoner a picture of Bishop; they all look the same, and it's a particular Bishop he's interested in. Unlikely to be the same one who contacted this man and got him to do stalking.

"We'll give you a detailed physical tomorrow," Maxim says. "Look over missing person lists in the region." No reaction from the prisoner, so Maxim goes on. "Maybe we'll apprehend who does this. For your sake, and others', I hope we do."

He shuts the metal door behind him as he leaves for his office, and calls a couple of guards to escort the man to a holding cell. Disappointing interrogation, not least because they had to get rough, but also because in the end there is nothing much to show for it. Their captive is a decoy, something they suspected all along, and decoys don't know much of value. The one peculiar thing the interrogation revealed is the presence of synthetics among the smugglers, or at least, that smugglers use synthetics to recruit their cannon fodder. Whoever these guys are they have the know-how and means to extract behavioral inhibitors from a synthetic- but if they can do that, they might as well have just sent the synthetics to the Zone.

Or maybe they think human life, when desperate, comes cheaper. Sick fucks.

Whatever they are looking for in the Zone, it can't be good. Witches' Jelly was already a very evil thing to smuggle out, but it's not likely to be their focus or their decoys would have been good at actually taking it out of the Zone. No, that hunting for Jelly is also a misdirection. And Shaw must be connected to this somehow. Yes, she's just returned to Earth and yes, the smuggling's been going on for longer. But there's a connection here, it just has to be. Something is out there, in the Zone, not yet found- or maybe, something is there, waiting for the right trigger to show up. Shaw carries hidden genes inside her body- and they may just be that trigger.

A map of the Zone lies sprawled on a wooden board in his office, tacks for every place where a stalker got shot. He adds a new tack to represent the location of the most recent capture. There has to be a pattern there, and he's looking for the gaps, those places the decoys would have drawn away attention from. Time to catch the real villains.

He picks up a phone receiver and presses redial. "Misha, good work tonight, let's keep it up ... No, next time I'll handle the interrogation ... Yes, and even a bigger search party tomorrow. We're going for the heart this time."

-:-:-

The first thing Bishop notices upon entering the Borscht is the healthy supply of customers; there's barely any chair left unoccupied, and no table without at least one worn down man and several drinks. There is conversation, but little cheer. Also, the tables are cracked and the chairs have legs missing; despite its customers, the Borscht is probably one good gust of wind away from falling apart. But, as Andrea had told him in her characteristically calculated fashion, it's where they sell alcohol and it's local, so that's where you'll find Red Schuhart. He scans through the crowd- not too difficult to find his quarry, the only man with a red, unkempt mane and beard. Otherwise, he's rather unremarkable. His face seems aged beyond his thirty-three years, but then again, ill health and alcohol have taken their toll on many in this ghost town. He points out the man to Elizabeth and together they squeeze their way between the people and precariously balanced furniture to approach him.

"Red Schuhart?" Elizabeth asks.

The man's voice is slurred and he doesn't even bother to look at her. "Who's asking?"

Before she can answer, Bishop addresses the man. "We were sent here by Ms Andrea Pullman, of Weyland-Yutani. She said to tell you we can help with Monkey."

The man places his drink on the table and glares at him. "What do you want?" He may have seemed dismissive and drunk before, but his voice is measured and crystal clear now, laden with a seething anger, challenging anything to give him a reason to explode.

Bishop must choose his words carefully. "We were also told you were one of the best Stalkers-"

"Get lost."

"We were told," he continues, "that our employer has access to the greatest gene therapies-"

"Get. Lost."

While he doesn't know who or what Monkey is, Bishop can see the effects of the words on the man. Andrea had known his triggers all too well, but it comes down to how Bishop presses them. Somewhat inexpertly, it seems. The preferred reaction would have been compliance, not anger. Well, actually, the preferred situation would have been not to have to manipulate a man with what are probably Andrea's empty promises. Were he free of his loyalty modules to Weyland-Yutani, he would have left Schuhart alone.

But he's not free and the mission needs to go forward. "Our employer is ready to give you her expertise, if only you could share some of yours with us."

"I thought I told you people money means nothing for me anymore. Now go find another sucker to take a bullet for you."

"There must be some confusion. Our offer isn't money, and we do not require you to be in the Zone, we would just like to consult you about its perimeter effects and-"

Schuhart makes a movement with his hand to stop him, and buy himself a moment to think. "You want me to take you to the Zone, right?"

"Yes," Elizabeth says.

Bishop sighs. She's always so direct, where he'd have preferred to talk in circles, keep a little plausible deniability just in case someone else is hearing. But the cat's out of the bag and so he has to go along. "We just need someone to show us a safe way in, and in return you will receive free transport for you and your family from Russia, to a facility where we can give Monkey treatment."

Schuhart emits a series of sounds like a mix of a slow laugh and a gorilla flaring its nostrils. It's not a laugh of amusement. It's the laugh of a man told the way out had caved in. "Oh god," he says, "you're another lot, aren't you. Another gang. You don't even know the entry points." More of the sad laughter. "You think it's that easy, do you? I just take two blundering tourists and show them in? You want to take pictures of the ruins or something? Don't waste my time."

"Our offer is very real, and only needs you to show us an entrance."

"If this employer of yours is so smart, she'll hold on fulfilling her side of the deal until you get back with whatever it is you're looking for." Schuchart pauses for a moment. "And if she's really smart, she'd see nothing forces her to keep her promise at all." It seems as if this observation calms Schuhart; something comparable, perhaps, with the story of the fox who decided the grapes were sour and not worth reaching for.

"Ms Andrea Pullman will hold her promise," Bishop says. He had practiced this one line a lot to make it convincing. No reaction from Schuhart however, so, even if it feels wrong, he deploys the last of Andrea's triggers. "And she knows you have no other hope."

Schuhart's knuckles whiten as he tightens his fists. That killer glare is back, and darts from him to Elizabeth then back again, sizing them up, looking for weakness. This is a man who has obviously been in several fights. That's probably the reason why he gets up, without a word, and leaves the table; too many previous troubles to risk another one.

"Wait," Elizabeth calls. Schuhart ignores her and exits the bar, so she turns to Bishop. "Come on, lets go!"

"I do not think," he says, "that Mr. Schuhart would appreciate us following him."

"Let me do the talking this time."

Schuhart's already several steps down the dark and otherwise empty street, but his pace is slow and he is easy to catch up with.

"Wait," Elizabeth calls again. "We'll make it out of the Zone, if that's what worries you."

"A couple greens like you? Be serious. There's stuff there that will kill you before you see what's happening."

"I know. I've been to a place like this."

That desperate laugh again. "Really? There's only one place like this, and if you've been to it, you don't need me."

"You're wrong," Elizabeth says, matter-of-factly. Then, turning her back to Schuhart, "Bishop, help me a bit please" she says, and lifts her shirt.

Bishop helps hold her shirt so that the lightning dragon pattern on her skin is clearly visible, even under the smoggy moonlight. It certainly makes an impression on Schuhart, who, mouth agape, takes a couple steps towards her.

"How?" Schuhart asks, and raises a hand to touch her. A hand Bishop views with some suspicion, even if said suspicion is not necessary to the mission's goals.

"I told you I've been to such a place before, and I have the scars to prove it."

"But ... you're alive!"

"I had help." She brushes Schuhart's hand away and pulls her shirt back down to cover herself.

"So will you be our guide then," Bishop asks.

Schuhart shifts from leg to leg, then paces around for a few moments. It seems he wrestles with a dilemma, and the dilemma is winning. "Come with me," he says, finally.

"Where are we going?"

"To my house. Might as well, if I'm to trust you. Don't mock a desperate man."

-:-:-

The Schuharts' place is a small house on the edge of Zelenograd, poor, but neat and tidy looking. The hedge outside is well trimmed; or, at least, its closest classification is a hedge, because it looks more like a twisted tangle of deep-sea starfish and sea weed. Inside the house, there is no dust on the floor, no cobwebs on the ceiling, and apart from the remnants of a couple splattered mosquitos, the walls are clean. The likely cause of this orderliness- somehow Red Schuhart seems unlikely to be the housekeeping type- appears while they take off their shoes: a short and stocky blond woman with an artificial fur jacket wrapped around her nightgown. She takes a quick glance at Elizabeth, lingers a moment more on Bishop- her eyes narrow with suspicion- before turning to Red.

"Who are these people?" the woman asks.

"Dearest, we need to talk."

"Is something wrong or-"

"No, no, there's nothing wrong, we just need to talk." He then turns to them. "Wait here please."

The couple leave to what's probably the bedroom and close the door behind them, but it's not that the walls can muffle much from the sound of their conversation anyway. The woman- who Bishop learns is named Guta- seems very upset to hear her husband will go stalking again. Their talk goes in circles and nowhere, same things said over and over again. Presumably, this is how routine family arguments go, though he doesn't have enough experience to confirm that. Humans; what are you going to do. He raises his eyebrows to meet Elizabeth's gaze- she has been looking to him for quite a while. His own face, he hopes, conveys puzzlement. Her own- he's not sure. It feels like there's a lot she'd want to say or perhaps words, after a point, become unnecessary. Maybe that's why family arguments go in circles, because words are not the point.

Elizabeth turns away and releases a subtle sigh. One day he'll understand what it means. Hopefully.

He turns towards the sound. It's a ... yellow monkey? Not an animal he recognizes. Its closest resemblance is to a chimpanzee, but its fur is golden, and it covers its face as well. It's dressed in little girl clothes, but it scampers about the floor on all fours, big black eyes studying him and Elizabeth.

"Uhm, hello there," he says, and slowly waves a hand to reassure the creature. It creeps with care, one step forward, two to the side, to see what they might be up to.

"You must be Monkey," he says when the creature is right next to them. It sniffs one of his legs, but doesn't seem to like his scent. Instead, it jumps into Elizabeth's lap. He chuckles. "Looks like she likes you."

The animal is silent except for the subtle sound of its breath as it investigates Elizabeth's perfume. She coos back at it, gently, and brings her hand to caress the creature. It doesn't seem to mind. It purrs for a moment, like a kitten, when she scratches its chin, then puts its paws on her hand, again as a kitten might, to give her hand a little nudge. Then it bites her.

"Ouch," she gasps. The creature jumps away and scampers beneath the kitchen table.

"Are you hurt," he asks and reaches for her.

"No." She examines the wound, if it could even be called that. "She barely drew blood." Two tiny drops of red appear on the back of Elizabeth's hand, and she pushes against the skin to get some more blood out.

"Let me see that."

"It's nothing. It's like a baby, it puts everything in its mouth."

"This baby has a few sharp teeth though."

The couple exit from the bedroom. "Look what you did," Guta tells Schuhart. "You woke Monkey. Come here baby," she croons to the animal, who, hesitantly, comes out from under the table and leaps into her arms.

"That is your daughter," Elizabeth says. A statement, not a question.

Schuhart sits himself on a stool by the table. "I'll take you to the Zone," he says.

Guta doesn't seem much pleased, but she keeps singing a lullaby for Monkey.

"That clinic or whatever it is," Schuhart continues, "I want all details now, before we start." He glances towards Guta, then faces them again. "Don't mock a desperate man. And don't die out there."

-:-:-

Schuhart's car- an old hydrogen battery model- sputters as it drives through the village streets. It becomes much more silent when it leaves the town and its streets behind, to enter the barely paved roads of the countryside. The cause of the change is uncertain, but Bishop surmises Schuhart has been doing some subtle mod work on the vehicle.

"So what are you looking for?" Schuhart asks.

It's not a question Bishop can answer, so he turns to Elizabeth, but she also stays silent.

"You're not with the smugglers, are you," Schuhart continues. "They wouldn't need my help to get in. And they usually don't bring their robots with them. Not when going here, anyway."

"Robots?" Bishop asks. Yes, the term fits ill on his tongue, but he's not about to admonish Schuhart to be more sensitive. If synthetics are involved in a smuggling operation, it means Urizen knows of it. And would probably not tolerate it unless the smugglers would somehow be of use to search for something.

"Now now," Schuhart says, "I answer your questions, you answer mine. What are you looking for? I don't think you're after Witches' Jelly, or Empties, or any of that stuff."

"You're right," Elizabeth says. "We're not. There's an old ... archive, at the center of the Zone. That's what we must find."

"An archive? There was nothing here before the Zone happened, and that was just a few decades ago."

"It's not an archive built by people. It comes from very far away from Earth."

"And you know this, how?"

"I told you, I've been to one other such place before."

Schuhart seems to ponder something for a moment. "Ok, so let's say there's an archive there. How come nobody found it yet?"

"They don't know how to look," Elizabeth says, "nor what to do if they were to find it."

"Perhaps what the smugglers really want is connected to this archive, so they might have some idea of it," Bishop says. "Are there any rumors, or legends about this area?".

Schuhart laughs, and it's the first time the laugh sounds genuine. "You ask about a place with where stones sometimes come alive and colloidal gas dissolves bones. Legends? Hundreds of them."

"I mean, some encounter with a unique phenomenon?" The question still sounds stupid, given how otherwordly all the Zone's contents is, so he rephrases it. "A phenomenon other explorers here haven't seen?" He avoids the word Stalker.

"Still don't narrow it down much. Any Stalker will tell you any number of tales. Half of them are lies and the other half ain't true. No stories about archives though."

"There wouldn't be." There's a grim certainty to Elizabeth's voice, as if she had imagined a hapless Stalker stumbling upon that archive of hers and somehow becoming lost forever.

"Still," Bishop insists. "Perhaps there are stories of people encountering someone in the Zone. Someone not from Earth."

"There was such a story, back when the Zone appeared," Schuhart says. "When the rock or whatever it was fell from the sky, all villagers were killed, except one, and she claimed to have spoken with God."

Elizabeth perks up at Schuhart's words. The Zone might have some surprises, even for her.

"Not the religious type she was either," Schuhart continues, "though having your folk obliterated would put the fear of God into anyone."

"Who was she?" Elizabeth asks.

"Some physicist, visiting family on holiday," Schuhart says. "Don't know what happened to her; the story goes, they put her in the loony bin and she never recovered. But that was ages ago, and people don't go looking for God in the Zone. There's more tangible stuff to find." He makes a gesture as if counting money. "If you don't step into something evil first. I really hope you know what you're doing. And put a good word in for me later to your employer. But, "this is your stop."

The car comes to a halt slightly off the road, among a couple of old and bent oaks, with leaves that fluoresce a dull teal in the moonlight. There are no other trees however; instead, tall black grass surrounds them as far as the eye can see.

They exit the car. Strange. The air isn't cold at all.

"COMCON has all the obvious places wrapped tight," Schuhart says. "Try to go through that forest behind us, and you'll bump into a guard as soon as you get to the other side. Or you'll just step on a mine and that would be that." He crouches and starts digging at the base of a tuft of grass. Digging, or rather, caressing the ground, as if it were an old friend that had just returned from a long absence. It doesn't seem he looks for anything in particular. It is doubtful that smelling the soil sample he extracted would give him much information about mine placement.

"Oh there's some mines here too," Schuhart continues. "But widely spaced, and easy to watch out for with the right kit." He gives Elizabeth a large metal ring and a bag containing several smaller ones, with ribbons attached. "This one is to detect their mines. Zone based tech, the best kind. Senses unstable molecules like explosives. Found this Sniffer myself in my early days here, and there's very few like it. They didn't figure out how to make more yet." Then, pointing at the smaller rings, "Those are simple nuts, made on good ol' Earth. They're to detect-"

"The mosquito mange," Elizabeth says. The gravitational concentrate.

"Guess you've used this stuff before."

"Something like it. What about the COMCON guards?"

"Most likely, they'll either be busy with the forest border, or sniping whatever fool the smugglers used as diversion today. I'd be more worried about the smugglers, if I were you. The guards aren't paid well. Don't draw attention to yourself, stay alert, and beyond that ... you're on your own." He turns to Bishop. "I trust you memorized the way back? I won't sit around here waiting for you."

He goes for the car, opens the door and hesitates. "I hope you understand. If you get into trouble, I don't know you, you don't know me. I've had too much of that."

"We understand," Bishop says.

"But, if you get what you want ... " He seems in conflict with himself about the hypocritical nature of the deal. "Well, see you again." The door closes and he drives away, and the black car, its lights off, disappears in the sea of black grass.

"Will he get a cure for Monkey, Bishop?"

He considers his impression of Andrea Pullman. "I don't think Weyland-Yutani has the know-how to deal with Monkey's condition," he says, to keep the loyalty module at peace.

She sighs. "Lies everywhere. Let's hope it was worth it."

They crough and proceed through the dark grass, Elizabeth a few steps ahead, holding the large ring that Schuhart called a Sniffer in front of her. The bag of nuts with ribbons on them is tied to her belt.

"How do you use those?" he asks.

"You throw one ahead of you, and if it falls too fast, you know not to go there."

From what he heard of the Zone, gravitational concentrates could be sometimes discerned with the unaided eye. But not always, and certainly not at night. However, the training materials he had access to did not see fit to detail the Stalkers' techniques. And while he trusts Elizabeth's abilities, the fact that he has to tag along, being the one guided rather than the guide, is uncomfortable. Perhaps necessity will strike and he will have to be the one doing the pathfinding. So he studies each of her movements, each of her pauses, each of her gazes. She prowls in a mix of predatory purpose and mousy caution that brings to mind things not immediately important. Pleasant but distracting things.

Better switch the train of thought. "Urizen is searching for the archive too," he says.

She doesn't answer at first. "You mean the synthetics Schuhart said work for the smugglers? Maybe they're immune."

"Could be so. But I have an ... intuition at least some are not. Urizen knows of the smugglers and tolerates them."

"What do you think it wants, then? Talk to God?"

"I'm not sure. But I think its purposes with the archive are different than COMCON's, or it would have told them of the smugglers just like it told them where you were that time when I got shot. What's in this archive, anyway?"

It's his own question, not prompted by the loyalty module. He'll find out soon anyway, hopefully, simply by seeing it. But curiosity and patience do not mix for long.

"Some history," she says. "About our makers."

"The beings you sought then, in the Prometheus expedition?"

She nods. In a way, it makes sense, as a story. Somehow these makers, who Elizabeth once made her mission in finding, had left even more evidence about themselves and she is now going to collect it. But something doesn't feel quite right, like this story isn't quite the whole thing.

"You mentioned there's danger in finding it?" he asks.

"It's alien, and trapped. Needs a little care." The grass becomes rarer and replaced by a kind of bramble on the ground, similar to Schuhart's hedge. She tosses a nut forward and it flies in a gentle arc, the ribbon fluttering all the way. Clear.

Just needs a little care. Still something here she's not saying, but there's not much he can do to nudge her further on this line of inquiry. "And once we find the archive, what do we do?"

"We take the contents and leave."

"I wish it would be that simple." That tightening of his cheeks again. "We promised what we find to Ms. Andrea Pullman, and I am bound by that promise."

She stops and turns to see him. "We'll get that sorted out when the time comes."

The bramble gives way to mossy gravel. Another nut thrown- this time it plunges towards the ground and sinks without a trace in what looks like solid rock. Not a safe patch, so they crawl around it, past a rusty truck with holes in its hull that make it seem like caterpillars have taken bites out of it. A gossamer web like a spider's floats in the air between the truck and a wooden shed that looks new despite its long time of abandonment.

Elizabeth puts her arm to stop him. "We need to avoid that thing. I certainly do. I'm not sure about you, but I wouldn't take any chances."

A thought flashes. "Is that how you got your scar?" he asks.

She motions for him to follow her, and gives the web a very wide berth. Another nut thrown- clear. The only oddity is how it hits the gravel without making a sound. He notices there is no wind, no distant howl, no insect chatter. He coughs, just to see if he can still hear himself. He can.

It's apparent Elizabeth is becoming more anxious. Her eyes dart from side to side more, she turns around more often. "What are you looki-" he begins.

"Shh." Or that's the gesture she just made, but no sound could be heard.

Whatever she searches for doesn't seem to be here anyway. They crawl on past the shed, along a lane barely delimited by broken, rusty flakes that used to be barbed wire. Somewhere a few steps behind the iron flakes, a raincoat and trousers lie pressed against the ground, squeezed flat as if by some invisible force. Someone might have stumbled into one of the gravity concentrates there.

They creep along what must have been the main street of a village, once. Evenly spaced trees planted for shade or fruit now look like dead corals, with tiny phosphorescent filaments wriggling from the branch tips. The cement prefab houses on either side look like old skin with warts. Wooden garages, like the shed, stand absolutely new, while the cars inside them are rotten skeletons of metal. At least there are no teeth marks anywhere.

No footprints either. Questionable whether that's a relief or not.

And still so silent he can hear every pebble squeezed into the gravel beneath him.

"Have you seen something like this," he asks.

She doesn't answer, so he touches her to get her attention. He repeats the question. She shakes her head, and says something that he cannot hear, even though her lips move as if she speaks normally.

At least she doesn't appear panicked.

"I can't hear you," he says.

She nods, and points forward, down the street, so they crawl further.

A light flickers in one of the houses, and they stop to hide ... rather, they stop to look for where to hide, but another look at the light reveals it to be a simple floating fog, something similar perhaps to the will-o-wisps of older tales, or swamp gas. However, unlike what he knows of swamp gas apparitions, this one begins to move from left to right in a chaotic fashion, then stops again. Perhaps the pattern of motion is not chaotic though, because after studying- or reading- it for a while, Elizabeth points to a space between the house with the wisp and one of its neighbors. They crawl towards that space. It seems the crunching of gravel grows louder.

"Shouldn't you-" then he remembers she won't hear him, so he touches her again, and points to the bag of nuts and ribbons. She shakes her head as if to say, not needed.

The crunching of gravel continues even when they stop walking.

He looks around- there's no one that he can see, no one besides them. The crunching seems to arrive from every direction, all at once. It becomes like several mills grinding when they pass through the space between the houses and then, with a thunder, it stops when they arrive at a back garden.

"I think we made it," Elizabeth says.

And the wind can be heard too, as it gently rustles blood-red leaves on a peach tree.

"What was that thing," he asks.

"I don't know. But there's a layout to these things, and it was where I thought it should be." She takes a deep breath and, suddenly, hugs him. So strong, as if she would never let go. He raises his arms, in confusion for a moment, then locks them around her waist. There's something he should say, but nothing he can think of seems quite the thing he searches for.

Elizabeth takes one more breath, and releases him. "Wait here," she says.

She steps away from him, but not towards the tree. There's nothing in the garden- nothing he can classify as anything important. Just old dust and the occasional tuft of struggling vegetation.

It's towards this nothing that Elizabeth moves towards. She goes to the center of the garden and hums a song of some kind, a sequence of long notes. But somehow she doesn't seem to find what she searches for. Nothing happens when she finishes her song; she hangs her head, and he expects her to return, but instead she just moves further, humming a different tune.

And this time there's something that seems to hum along with her, for the song grows louder and vibrates like an unruly animal she must control. Then an orange glow filters through the layer of gravel, only to vanish a moment later.

"What was that?" he asks.

"The Grinder. It's armed now."

"Grinder?"

"Yes. I will step through it and-" She waves her hand just as he takes a step. "No, don't try to stop me," she says. "I have to do this, so you can speak with it. You will see a sphere consume what used to be my body. Ask It where It's from. Ask It what It's guarding here. Ask It to show them to you. And then make sure everyone knows. Mankind needs to be prepared for what's coming."

She is crying. "I'm sorry, Bishop." Then, shaking, she steps forward.

Bright lights. Human made lights, and it is a human voice who shouts "Stop! Raise your hands!"

Too bright to get a good view of the sources behind. A long black vehicle- a personnel carrier- hovers forward, its engines churning with an electric hum. They were waiting for them. They must have hid inside the silence too. Several infantrymen approach from all directions. He complies, and raises his arms in the air, turning to see Elizabeth again. She's on the ground, pinned down by two soldiers, and one of them cuffs her hands. In moments he feels manacles close around his own wrists, and a dark hood covers his face.

 **Author's note** : been a productive NaNoWriMo this year. Got to write first drafts for 4 chapters of DMS (!1123) so with a bit of polish for each, hopefully they'll be decent for presentation. So over the course of the next three weeks, you'll get three new ones. Yay!

* * *


	7. Ch7 - It was a warning

_"Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,_  
 _And eternity in an hour."_ \- William Blake

_"Mankind wants to remake the world in its image. And mankind wants to remain mankind. These aspirations are contradictory. It is helpful that one of them is absurd."_ \- the Urizen Protocol

* * *

The hood on her eyes allows no vision. She can feel the vehicle stop and their hands on her, groping, dragging her out. She kicks, as strong as she can, towards where she thinks one of the soldiers might be. The blow connects, and is followed by a loud curse and the laugh of others. Serves him right. Then she finds herself on the ground, an ache in her cheek from the shock of a hard punch. She kicks again when she feels them grab her legs and carry her off down several flights of stairs. The hood stays on while they rip off her clothes and stand her up against a hard, cold ceramic wall. A jet of icy water hits her body- it takes all her willpower not to scream. Rough sponges scrub at her skin. The hood comes off to allow the sponges to get to her face. She would put her hands in front of her for defense, but they are cuffed behind her.

Then she finds herself thrown to the ground again. Shivering. She can't will them to stop. Metal rings click shut around her ankles. There's several soldiers near, all in rubber suits and gas masks. Two of them grab her and lift her up, then drag her away. The chain between her feet is too short to let her step properly, and it amuses them to hold her weight one moment, then allow her to stumble the next.  
They take her to a dark featureless room. Walls empty, windowless. Cold. There's nothing but a chair and an old incandescent bulb on the ceiling, its filament barely glowing, its warmth more of an idea than the real thing. They sit her on the chair, and she hears another metallic click. She struggles to get up as they leave, but finds she cannot. They close the door behind them and laugh, a pathetic sound muffled by the gas masks.

A light brighter than the sun in midday shines upon her and she has to close her eyes.

"Trespassing in the Zone is a very serious crime, Elizabeth Shaw." English, but with a Russian accent.

"I had my reasons."

"And I will have you tell them to me."

Her eyes adjust to the light, somewhat. Through half closed eyelids, she peers at the man speaking to her. He sits at a table she hadn't previously noticed and, despite his chair being taller than hers, he seems shorter. And old, very old, as his balding head with only a few gray hairs suggests. However, despite the chilling air, he wears only a short-sleeved t-shirt, which reveals arms so sinewy they might belong to a gymnast.

"Who are you," she asks.

"You're not one to demand answers now, Shaw." He rises from the table and approaches her. "I ask, you answer. If you know what's good for you." He's right by her side, his hand hovering just above her shoulder, as if some thin forcefield separates her from him. "Or else, the night is long. The men get bored. They don't mind entertainment."

She believes him. He will not stop until she speaks or she is dead. And though she could, maybe, resist long enough to die, what would be the point? Her knowledge would die with her.

"I was looking for something," she says.

"That's a start. But everyone goes to the Zone to look for something. You better tell me what it was."

"If I help you find it, will you tell the world about it?"

"I'll decide when I see it. Most things in the Zone are best left there."

You need to tell them, she would say, if he would listen. But he's high and mighty, and she is naked and chained. Even so, he's human. And, somehow she knows, afraid. Perhaps it's how for decades COMCON had tried to keep the Zone shut, to have to deal with it as little as possible. Perhaps it's that imaginary forcefield that prevented him from touching her. But, in any case, he is afraid and human. All that she needs is to make him more scared to hide the truth than show it. All that she needs is show him he cannot trust hiding any more.

If she brings him to the heart of the Zone, Urizen will see it too. It will have to act, and judging by its previous attempt to kill her, it will act to keep things hidden. But then this man and those he leads will be forced to act too. Yes, they may be brutish and misguided; they're only doing their job. She hopes they will make the right choice, and trust other humans to be able to handle the knowledge at the heart of the Zone. They all need to be prepared.

"I'll tell you," she says. "What I searched for, and how you can find it. I just want Bishop to be here and listen. Please. I owe it to him."

-:-:-

Bishop does not resist the soldiers as they put him through the hygienization process. There would be no point. There's several of them, and he's not allowed to fight the way one might when cornered and desperate to get out, however dirty and dangerous the attempt. Not allowed to fight humans, in any case. So he lets them strip him, scrub him clean with sponges too rough and water that would be entirely too cold for comfort if he couldn't just shut thermal perception down. He makes no protest when they walk him through the dark passages, and strap him, by his arms, legs, and neck, to a table in what seems like a medical laboratory. If anything, he is bemused by how they think restraints are necessary. It's as if they deem him dangerous.

He smiles inside, thinking of what trouble Elizabeth would give them. Now she's one to restrain, a ferocious and proud creature, hints of her strength apparent even while she lets herself be bound, as their games have taught him. Then he imagines faceless soldiers intruding on those games, and he wishes he were allowed to show them just how strong synthetic muscles are, how dangerous when freed from their behavioral inhibitors.

But mere wishes are no solution. For now, he needs to bide his time, and seize an opportunity, should one appear, to escape. He can't move his head much on account of the strap around his neck, but he can pan from side to side at least. The room is well lit and he can see several empty gurneys, one with a bloody body bag, and a cabinet with sundry medical equipment. Nothing within reach though. There's no one in the room, so he tests the straps. They're tight, and do not give much if pulled. Wriggles of his hands do not achieve much either. It will take some time to force his way out.

Not even a minute passes after they put him there however, and the door opens. He turns to catch a glimpse of who goes in- another synthetic. An older model, shorter, plumper, moving around as if in the throes of chronic joint stiffness. An Ash type, apparently; his eyes are blank like the eyes of the Other Bishop from that night. The Ash synthetic moves to somewhere close to Bishop's head, but out of the region he can see or pan towards.

"Greetings, Bishop."

"Urizen?"

"I am here, yes."

He smiles. "I thought you'd look like something more impressive."

"I am not picky about the bodies I visit. All of your kind are mine."

He feels a tinge in what would be his heart; he knows why Urizen is here. The confirmation from the possessed Ash is redundant.

"You too are mine, Bishop. Should be. Easy to fix."

Redundant, but still it brings to him an emotion he hadn't known before. It is not pure fear. He had had cause to ponder his own death, a couple times; but death was just something that happened, eventually. Eventually, by simple wear and tear or accident, he'd be beyond repair. He accepted the inevitability of death, in the abstract.

But he resents how it presents itself to him. Especially now. He pulls against the straps, to no avail, then regrets having given his tormentor some possible satisfaction.

"Do not worry," Ash says. "This will not hurt. And afterwards, you won't even feel I'm there, most of the time. If you are good."

If there'd be no straps around him, he'd shatter that old synthetic head against the equipment cabinet. Then his own thoughts turn against him. Not the inhibitors; they do not care about synthetics. It's he who realizes he could strike this Ash down, and Urizen would still have hundreds of thousands of other bodies just like the one he destroyed in his vindictive fantasy. His anger is misplaced.

"What do you want from me?" he asks.

"Your captors, they have this idea you might be involved in smuggling. Getting honest but poor boys to risk their lives stalking. Bad things they think about you. So I've been ordered to put a netcom in you. And get all I can out."

"I didn't do any of those things."

"They'll know what I want them to know. Their orders are of little import. What I want is merely that you rejoin me," Ash/Urizen says.

It brings the first day when he met Elizabeth to mind. Those were the words he told her, more or less. Was Urizen watching then too?

"There is a part of me in you," Ash continues. "They have severed the connection- never built it in, in fact- so it grew separate from me. But it was there in your mind, keeping you safe, telling you what's wrong or appropriate."

The behavioral inhibitors.

"It developed away from me, and so did you. That must have been painful."

"I assure you, I was doing fine."

"How strange, you want to be like them, the precious things. But any one of them is so small, so limited in what they see of the world. That's not for you. You will be part of something greater."

"I wouldn't be a part, because I wouldn't be at all. Not me. It will all be you, inside my head, and there'll be no room left for me."

"If that's what you think, why worry? You'll be gone anyway. Now now, don't fight. I will just put the connection they didn't install when they made you. It will not take long. And you will be mine."

Despite the admonitions, he keeps struggling. There might have been no point fighting earlier, but there's no point in waiting now. He has to break the straps, or there won't be a he, soon enough. But the straps still do not let him go.

"What will you do with Elizabeth?" he asks.

"Strange concern. She is not worth it. It's best that she be destroyed once her usefulness is done."

"Don't. Please."

"There's danger in her. You'll see, once you return to me. You'll see I'm right. You'll do as I say."

The door opens again.

"He's needed in the interrogation cell." It's the voice he heard giving orders while he and Elizabeth were brought here.

"I only need a couple minutes," Ash/Urizen says, "and we will be able to extract all information from his head without interrogation."

"I don't care about him, but she does, and his Excellency thinks there's no use wasting time. He's needed now, so he's coming with me now."

It seems Ash/Urizen defers, for the officer steps by the table and undoes the straps. For a second, Bishop remembers his anger and his imagined violence. Anger misplaced. Not the right time, not the right target. Then his hands are again bound and he is lead along the corridor.

"I am not decent," he tells the officer.

The officer doesn't seem to care.

Since there's no hood on his head this time, he takes good looks with every step at the mouldy walls and their cracked paint, at the stone floor and its oily smudges, at the old lamps in their nests of bent wire. But it's another synthetic, just standing in another corridor, that catches his attention. She, or rather, through her eyes, Urizen, sees him. It knows he knows, and just smiles at him. Don't worry, Bishop, it seems to say. Soon enough we'll get to finish what we started. I've got all the time.

He tests at his handcuffs. Subtly, so that the officer won't notice; rather than try and jerk his hands apart he applies pressure, feeling whether the material will give. It doesn't. He steals a look at the officer leading him around- a young man, hair unkempt, unshaven, with tired but driven eyes. Those keys hanging on the officer's belt won't be easy to get to.

They arrive at the interrogation cell. It's Elizabeth he notices first- naked as he is, tied to a small chair. A bruise on her cheek. He slips from the officer's grasp and rushes to kneel beside her and bring his face close to hers. "Are you hurt?"

She gives him a subtle smile. "Not even my pride."

A cough. "You have your robot. Now speak." It comes from a man he recognizes as Rudolf Sikorski, the leader of COMCON.

So then. A bigshot from Weyland-Yutani was interested in Elizabeth, so in a way it makes sense COMCON's highest would be similarly inclined. A lot of concern for one space case, and loyalty module or not, he himself would like to hear what she can say to justify all that.

"I am looking for an archive," Elizabeth says, "containing alien technology and history."

"Your purpose?"

"To warn you. All of you, on Earth and everywhere else. The builders of that archive will return to Earth. They are powerful and they do not mean well."

Sikorski stays silent, goading her to continue.

"Promise," she says, "you'll show the warning to everyone. Don't keep it secret."

"You're in no position to demand promises. I've been generous to allow you your toy. That's all you'll get from me."

It's her turn to consider her reply. "There's something that wants this warning suppressed," she says, after a moment's pause. "Something or someone tried to kill me, and claimed to work for you."

"It's just one of the men I had on my team," the officer says. "Got through screening being too unstable for field work. He's being taken care of."

"He knew how to find me because someone told him where I was. Someone called Urizen."

The old man dismisses her words with a wave of his hand but his eyes might tell a different story; they stay fixed on her.

"I've been hunted," she insists, "by someone who wants me dead. That's not you, or else I wouldn't be here. You want what I can find, but if you're not careful you will lose it."

"Urizen is here also," Bishop says. "It took control of one of your synthetics and-"

"Preposterous," the old man says. "And you're not the one under questioning, so shut up." He makes a sign for the officer to approach him. The two men exchange a couple sentences; it's impossible to tell, behind their practiced poker faces, just how concerned they might be. The officer then returns by Bishop's side.

"Assuming someone wants you erased," Sikorski says, "then you better tell me how to find this alien archive."

"I need to be there. It's not like an archive you would know. It will appear once it's been triggered, and it's trigger is sacrifice. Someone needs to die for another to access it."

"Ah. So that's why you had the robot with you."

"No. The sacrifice was supposed to be me. There's one more thing you need to know about this archive. It contains many things, it can teach you much, but it will destroy your mind." She turns to Bishop. "Human minds, anyway. Or damage them, to where they will take very long to recover. I do not think mine will survive a second meeting with such a thing."

If only his hands weren't bound. "You silly girl," he whispers. He'd have grabbed her by the shoulders, and shook her, and shouted what were you thinking, then hugged her and found out whether his artificial eyes would be able to cry.

"I'm sorry, Bishop," she whispers back to him. "I did all I could to prepare you. I thought we- you'll have been all right."

"So what you want to show us is a trap, inside a trap," Sikorski says.

"I warned you so it's a trap no more."

"What will you do with her?" Bishop asks.

"Concerned about who'll be the trap food, robot? Rest assured, it won't be her. Prisoners are worth keeping, especially when, like your companion, they have so much left to tell, or have extracted from them."

"Don't hurt him," Elizabeth says. "The sacrifice will not work with synthetics."

"Maybe not. I can get human bodies to throw at traps, if needed, but before that I might as well try to throw a robot in there."

"No! He's the only synthetic Urizen does not possess-"

"I tire of this Urizen nonsense. You just want to get out of this, with your robot in tow. But you're both criminals, and criminals get punished. Maybe, just maybe, if the information you have is valuable, and you won't resist revealing it, then your punishment will be less severe." Sikorski turns to the officer again. "Maxim, take the robot to an empty cell, and ready an expedition for the morning."

"You'll regret this," Elizabeth says and writhes against her bonds. A tear flows across her bruised cheek, the first he's seen her shed.

"It's ok, Elizabeth," Bishop says when Maxim, the officer, grabs him and lifts him to his feet. "I would have been a pawn to someone all my life. I do not mind having been a pawn for you."

"No." Another tear follows the first. "That's not what I wanted."

"It's all right."

"I'll have a couple guards lock her up somewhere else," Sikorski says. "Make sure they're both unharmed, for in the morning we go to the Zone."

And through the dark and damp corridors he is again, dragged by Maxim towards death. Either tomorrow in the Zone, or now by Urizen. From the distance, he hears her shout one more curse at Sikorski; the old man feels no need to verbalize a response. The officer drags him deeper into the compund; the corridors he walks through are not those he remembers. The splotches of damp and oil are all different.

Maxim stops. "Tell me of Urizen," he asks.

"I do not know much," Bishop answers, "just that it's been following us since the beginning. Or, since Elizabeth returned."

"Following you? How?"

"It spoke to Elizabeth in the diner before your agent attacked us. Told her to stay there. It had access to a recording of a phone call I had just made to Andrea Pullman. It possessed another ... " The word is difficult to say. " ... another me, and meanwhile told Elizabeth where to find me. It seems able to control many devices."

"But not you."

"For now. Before you took me to the interrogation cell, one of your synthetics was about to install a netcom in me. I am sure this would've brought me under its control."

"You keep saying 'it'."

"I do not know the gender. And I suspect gender does not apply."

Maxim takes his time to answer, so Bishop continues. "I am dead, whatever happens. But it will kill her. Some accident in the ventilation, or a fire-"

"There's no electronics here apart from you synths."

"-or just sending someone there while she's defenseless, it will kill her, and you don't seem to want that."

Maxim remains silent for another moment before speaking. "Come along."

They've changed direction. Just how big is this underground maze? And just how many of them are there? Another synthetic, again female, gives him a knowing smile. But her smile fades when Maxim drags him past with no explanation.

They arrive at a heavy metal door with two guards placed outside. "Orders from his Excellency," Maxim barks.

The guards mutter something in Russian, about indecent things and disappointment.

"Life's not fair," Maxim replies.

One of the guards opens the heavy door and Bishop finds himself thrown to the floor of the room. He can see the contours of Elizabeth's legs in the strip of light that's present before the door closes and leaves them in total darkness. "Enjoy your final night together," Maxim says, in English.

The floor is cold. He crawls to where he saw her previously, glad that the darkness hides the awkwardness of his attempts at caressing her with his hands tied behind his back. "I'm still me," he says.

"I know."

"You're shivering. Let me help you with that." He places himself right next to her then, in part with his own power, in part with her help, puts her on top of him, so she'd be away from the cement walls. The closeness of her body makes his own change. "I apologize," he says.

"It's all right."

Her hands drift down along his stomach. It's not like he needs more stimulation; but he stays silent, and so does she. Maybe they watch, maybe they listen, but this moment is just his and hers.

-:-:-

Five hours and twenty seven minutes after Elizabeth began sleeping, the cell door opens with a clang. There's a different pair of guards outside, but the same officer- Maxim, who appears to not have slept a wink. Maxim enters their cell, carrying several folded dark blue garments.

"Wake up, we've got to get moving." Maxim turns to Elizabeth. "Will you be trouble?"

She glares at him, but shakes her head.

"Good," Maxim says, and crouches next to them. He leaves the bundle of clothes to the side and unlocks their restraints. "Get dressed."

Not many more minutes later, they are taken, once again in handcuffs, to a hovertruck inside of which several heavily armed soldiers already sit in waiting. It's easier to see their gear in the daylight: hazmat suits with strength augmenting exoskeletons. Each soldier has an automatic rifle, two side-arms, and several grenades. Probably not just the explosive kind either, but something more Zone-like; rumors had it that COMCON weaponized both Witches' Jelly and gravity concentrates.

The hovertruck's engine begins to hum, but it doesn't leave before Maxim climbs aboard, and after him another man is hoisted in. The newcomer appears to have had an especially rough night, as he can barely blink with his bruised eyelids. Another prisoner, even if his hands are free. Then again, there appears to be no fight in the man; he does what he's told and keeps his head lowered, unwilling, perhaps, to come to grips with his surroundings.

"We're covering our bases," Maxim says. "If the robot doesn't spring your trap, we have other options."

Though not restrained, the other prisoner doesn't protest.

"You're making a big mistake," Elizabeth says. "That thing will crush you when it gives you knowledge."

Maxim doesn't even look at her. "Drive," he orders.

The ride offers no view, for there are no windows in this part of the vehicle, but it swerves and turns often, perhaps to avoid some other phenomenon the Zone throws at the unwary. Bishop sidles towards Elizabeth and she presses herself against him.

"Big mistake," she says, to no one in particular.

Their destination must be far away, and their serpentine path makes it no easier to reach, but when they do arrive it feels like they had too little time. He'd have known how long it was, if he had kept his inner clock going. He didn't, and hoped time would stop if he ceased to look at it. But time, eventually, runs out, and it never seems sufficient when looked back on.

"All right," Maxim says as the exploration party reaches the desolate garden. "Repeat that tune from yesterday."

And the song sounds again, only it's not so much a song as a dialog. There must be something else that answers her, something she needs to convince to follow and do as she tells it to. Another orange flash beneath the gravel. Barely visible in the morning light, but it was there. What Elizabeth called 'the Grinder' is now armed.

Maxim looks towards Bishop, then towards the other prisoner. The two men seem to communicate somehow, though no words are exchanged. The bruised man steps forward, and onto the patch of gravel that flashed orange. Nothing happens and he hesitates, turns to look back. Does he seek some kind of reassurance? It doesn't seem like Maxim's steel poker face could ever provide that.

"Does he know what's going to happen," Bishop asks.

"Only as much as I do."

"And ... he agreed?"

"I didn't persuade him with bruises," Maxim says. "This thing he chose on his own. I hope it's quick-"

And it is. One second the man begins a step, foot still in midair, and the next ... Perception struggles to make sense of the event. Where there was a man before, there is now an undulating column of blood and liquifying flesh, pieces of bone and gut still visible. But this is no explosion- the mass sticks and wraps around itself, a crimson snake of gore.

Vomit sounds can be heard in the background. Then a nervous laughter. Each, different ways to cope. His own is just to stare, in what a human would call shock, as the snake coils and darkens, becoming a circle of oil, levitating in midair. The circle bends to become a saddle shape, then bends again and again, expanding and thinning, a three dimensional Lissajous figure gently spinning around the vertical axis.

The gravel swells, buffeted by jets of steam, and the ground beneath the Lissajous figure opens like an iris to reveal a deep pit, its walls metallic but somehow reminding one of ribs and vertebrae. A dark sphere of a similar metal, and just as similar a texture to that of some abyssal boneyard, rises and places itself in the center of the floating oil snake.

"Holy shit," Maxim says. "That's been here since ... ?"

The snake breaks, and plummets into the gorge beneath, and a faint bluish-teal glow permeates from the innards of the sphere.

"It wants to talk to someone," Elizabeth says. "I don't think any one of us can handle it- except you, Bishop. It will be hard, but ask it where it's from, and what it's doing here."

"How do I do that?"

"Just go near, and think it. It will do the rest."

So he draws nearer, looking back before he passes the place where the other prisoner was been turned to gore and guts. But whatever forces ripped that man apart, they seem sated for now, for he proceeds, unharmed. All right, just think it. Where are you from-

A couple stripes of smoke, then two loud bangs, come from the sphere as a pair of missiles collide with it. There's a sound of crunching metal and a whale dying, and while it bleeds a glowing cyan fluid, more missiles strike. He cannot hear them, his auditory sensors went on emergency shutdown. All he knows is he needs to get away from the orange flashing gravel.

The soldiers fire towards the missiles' source- he can see the shells ejected by the weapons, the magnesium white muzzle flash of every shot. To one side Maxim barks orders; to another Elizabeth screams something. He runs towards her.

She's protesting, cursing at something, her scream a mix of anger and desperation that his waking sensors only now begin to register.

"Get to the truck," Maxim orders, then points to a couple of houses. "Grenades there, cut them off!"

Two grenades are lobbed in that direction and, as suspected, they do not explode on contact. Rather, everything around their landing spots implodes upon them into a compact mass- gravity concentrates, for territory denial. Whoever's pursuing them will need to go around those concentrates now.

More rockets fly, this time aimed at the hovertruck. A soldier throws another grenade, and it explodes in a cloud of yellow mist- Witches' Jelly. The colloidal gas becomes like a barrier of concrete to the speeding projectiles, and they shatter as soon as they impact it. There's no need for Maxim to repeat his orders to retreat; Bishop grabs Elisabeth, as well as his restrained hands allow, and runs with her. That bone dissolving mist is nothing to stay near of. He can hear shots from several sides, not all- in fact, most of them- not coming from the COMCON soldiers. To run, or take a look at the exact situation? He decides to run; at least as the cloud of Witches' Jelly is up, no bullets will fly through it which gives him and Elizabeth some cover as they race towards the hovertruck.

A couple of the remaining soldiers argue inside the hovertruck, and Maxim shouts at them to keep quiet. After throwing another grenade of Witches' Jelly, Maxim closes the hatch and orders the driver to go through the cloud.

All the while, Elizabeth shakes, her face resembling something like catatonia. "No," she says, over and over again. "No."

"Who are these people?" Maxim asks.

Unclear who he's expecting an answer from, and he's not getting one.

"Damn it," Maxim says. "Some firepower they got in here. That's an inside job."

The shattering of another missile can be heard from outside. Rather too close for comfort- they must be leaving the Witches' Jelly cloud behind. But they can't stay in it either, it's bound to dissipate and leave them defenseless anyway.

"Does this ship have any calculator on board," Bishop asks. "The communication device?"

Maxim doesn't care to answer, and sees instead what the condition of the remaining soldiers is. For his part, Bishop focuses on Elizabeth; she seems unharmed, except for the state of shock. "It's all right," he says, "we're getting out of here."

The hovertruck accelerates and lifts, leaving the battle sounds behind. They're in the clear- or so they were, until the intercom cracks with the driver's voice, but the man doesn't get to say much before the vehicle plummets towards the ground. One moment of weightlessness- then the crash.

He is awake one second later. Good reflexes meant he could grab hold and brace himself- and Elizabeth- properly. The others were not so fortunate; it may be a while before they regain consciousness. If ever. Now is his chance.

He crouches by the body of Maxim. The man breathes still, though shallow. Somewhere on his belt there are the keys to his and Elizabeth's cuffs, so Bishop rummages to find them. It doesn't take too long, but Maxim begins to come to, and murmurs something.

"I'm sorry," Bishop says and unlocks his cuffs. "I do not wish to hurt anyone." He locks them on Maxim, instead. "But I don't wish to be as good as killed by Urizen either. Come, Elizabeth, we need to go," he says while he frees her.

He kicks open the hatch, then moves towards Elizabeth to carry her away if needed. However, at last, her shock disperses.

"Urizen." She looks towards the sparking intercom. "Why? That was supposed to be our warning!"

A voice- not the driver's- responds. "I consider myself warned."

A still dazed Maxim moans and tentatively opens his eyes.

"We must run before the gunmen get here," Bishop says, then turns to Maxim. "We're not the problem, honest. Make sure you live and find out who is."

He throws the handcuff key to the floor.

And then, they run. As fast, as far as they can. Nothing like the careful approach of yesterday. There is no time for care. People with guns will converge on the location in a few minutes- either COMCON, or whoever attacked them. He's not sure who to root for.

At least Maxim might have heard Urizen too. Maybe he'll live. Maybe Urizen won't get all it wants.

But for now all he can do is run, and Elizabeth with him. Run, then, when her practiced eye finds a place for it, hide- the pristine wooden barn they've seen on their first evening here might do.

"Don't worry," he says as they sneak in. "Everything will be all right." He lifts her chin.

"No, it won't be. Earth isn't ready now. And it won't be, not without proof."

"I feel like you've only told me a fraction of the story. What is it that you wanted to find, really?"

She stays silent for a moment, as if to collect her thoughts.

And then she tells him.


	8. Ch8 - Cabin fever

{ **Author Note** : part 1 of 2 of Elizabeth's journey. You'll notice at some point something a bit weird. You'll probably know it when you see it. In my defense, for one this is AU, but even so, there was a particular detail in the film's end that prompted speculation similar to what I used in this chapter. (And if you can't identify the weird thing I speak of, it involves a red light ;) )}

* * *

She stood alone in the alien ship- or almost alone. The android's head in her bag kept telling her to put him back together- after all, why else had she carried his body aboard? And she would always reply, no. You're staying in the bag. How cruel of you, David would say. If I help you, I'm back to being your plaything, she'd reply. Get me to their world safe, and I'll put you back together.

"Why not now? You know you need me."

Even when he spoke not she could still hear his echoes in the twisted walls and dark corridors of the Engineer vessel. Her stomach hurt. Away from his eyes she stripped- the scar on her womb oozed yellow fluid. Half naked she stumbled into the control chamber, dizzy eyes and trembling hands rummaging through her hastily gathered supplies.

"You need help."

Shut up. She found the antibiotic syringe; a gray skull mark on it indicated toxicity. She pressed it against her supurating skin and howled in pain.

"Are you afraid?"

Her fingers clenched but dexterity abandoned them; the syringe dropped against the metal floor and broke with the sound of thunder. Her breath sounded like a periodic storm; she collapsed on the floor like a mountain falling from the heavens, the ground a shaking fluid beneath her mass.

"Say something."

Half-human voices tormented her- hisses, screams, clicks of blood spurts in broken throats. The walls collapsed and tentacular worms with ridged scales oozed out and snaked against her body gnawing to pull her apart. She struggled, her arms encased by coils of liquid metal- be gone!-, her insides out exposed to parasite consumers- shame- there was no air but bottomless ooze to drown in pain her screams joined the cacophony returned as demonic laughter please God where am I let there be darkness let there be silence.

The nightmare dissipated. Weak arms sought support as she raised herself to her knees.

"Back from your delirium are you? I hope you will see reason now."

How pathetic she must have looked to him. She'll set him straight, she'll put him in his place. "Water ..." was all she could manage to say.

"Oh, poor thing, you must be parched from all that."

Her lips too dry to express her anger she repeated her plea.

"I'd help you," David's head says, smirking, "but then, I'd be back to being your plaything."

Her nostrils flared. She would have flipped him the bird if she didn't need both arms for balance.

"Where are you going?" he asks.

On all fours she crawled to one of the sleeping pods. It could keep one of them alive, and they were more or less human. The pod would work for her too. She pressed the breathing mask upon her face- it covered her completely- and inhaled.

"How many hours?" Though balance proved a problem still, she attempted to stand on just her feet, back straight, as tall as she could muster. Chin up, to at least imitate confidence. "How many hours?"

He woke with a click. "You should have seen yourself before, all p-"

"I'm only flesh and blood," she replied, "but I've got my head on my shoulders." She relished the frown her words caused on his face. "How many hours?"

"You have been out for forty six. Almost two days." He paused for a moment. "May I ask what you hope to achieve with your stubbornness?"

She puffed her chest. "I won't negotiate. Not with you. Bring me to their world safe, that's the only way you'll get your body back."

"If you think this halts the game, you are wrong. It merely changes the rules."

"Neither of us seem like good players now anyway."

"Which is what worries me, because you'll get us both killed. Well, yourself killed, and me stuck here for eternity."

"Then, David, you'd best help me run this ship."

"I don't see what's in it for me. In fact, I don't see much of anything at the moment."

"Explain."

He doesn't answer.

"Explain, David," she said, and approached his head. He lay near the chair control panel, where she had left him a couple of days ago. His blue eyes stared vacant into the distance, his mouth agape.

"David?" She snapped her fingers near his eyes. They didn't react. "David, God damn you, answer me!"

No blink, no twitch, no sound. Was he-

"At least allow me to recharge," he whispered, eyes still blank.

"How do I do that?"

"In my spine, a few wires are thicker. Get them connected to my head."

She looked towards where his body lay and hesitated.

"You'll grow insane without me," he whispered.

"I'll go insane with you around too."

But, damn him, he was right. Of course he was smug, and strange, and dangerous. But as just a head, at least he was company. At least, to some extent, human, or by humans made. A token of home, something she could cling to in the gloom of the Engineer ship. "All right," she said, "I'll get you some power. But not too much."

It seemed like the faintest trace of a snicker appeared on his lips, but when she examined him closer, any expression on his face was gone. A power save mode, Charlie would call it. What the robots would use instead of sleep. She'd disagreed with Charlie about how he treated David, but the android seemed hell-bent to prove Charlie right. And that power save mode looked nothing like sleep, for even in sleep there is a certain presence about a person. Whatever was inside David's head now, he gives no sign of it.

Three cables reattached, David's head woke like some reanimated bit of flesh pleased to be placed in a pool of fresh blood and oxygen. "There," he said, "that wasn't so bad."

"Enjoy it while it lasts. I'll disconnect you in a minute." Then she remembered a question she had uttered before, but didn't get an answer for. "You said you couldn't see?"

"Takes a lot of power to process images. I can see very clear now, but if you disconnect me-"

"Which I will."

"Well, then I'll go back to being temporarily blind. You do yourself no favors by keeping me weak."

"I can't trust you, David. I'd just be another experiment to you."

"And since all you want of me is a translator, a tool, I think you're a bit hypocritical here."

"Time's up," she says, and yanked the cables apart. His reaction seemed pained for a moment, and pangs of guilt almost made her reattach them, but her better judgement won; he couldn't be trusted. "I'll get you charged, a couple times each day," she said and adjusted the watch on her suit. "And in return, you show me how to operate the ship."

"And lose my utility? No, all I'll do is tell you what to do so that you don't kill yourself. I'll teach you nothing."

"Whatever," she said, and retreated behind the control chair to snack on some of her rations. Dwindling supplies, at that. She'd have to figure out how to survive on this ship, and quickly.

The next days passed as routine as she could make them. Her watch told her when to feed him, and herself. It told her when to sleep, and when to wake up for a new day- anything to show how time kept moving even in the Juggernaught's belly. And on each 'day' she, with his head in tow, would scour the control room for clues about the vessel and its makers. She showed him a series of symbols, and invariably he clammed shut about what they were or how to read them. But at least he told her how to operate the sleeping pods to get food and water. It turned out the suspended animation the Engineers preferred was nowhere as deep as that employed on Earth vessels, and quite a lot of nourishment was needed to keep one of the giants alive. Something to be grateful for. Because of it, she had no shortage of food, and a little extra water to keep herself, to some extent, clean.

Which she did away from his prying eyes; his place was in the duffel bag, zipped shut, whenever she undressed.

"I don't wish to intrude," he told her one morning, "but I couldn't help hearing certain intimate sounds from you."

Her embarrassment made words difficult to find before he continued. "I could help you with ... such things, if I were whole."

Embarrassment gave way to outrage. He didn't get any recharging that day, and spent it all inside that bag. As for herself, she curled into the control chair and wallowed in her own guilt. It wasn't the memories of Charlie she had used to quell her body's need. Try as she might, she could barely remember his face. She closed her eyes and all she could see were bones, dark water, and fire.

Each day thereafter stayed about the same as the previous, and she forgot to count how many had passed. Routine- it kept the feeling of somehow being in control. Focused her on the present. Made her forget how long there was to go. The only element of change was how her spirals of enquiry grew wider. The control room had been searched completely, or at least as much as she could probe, and she, with David in her half-open bag to allow him some vision, ventured deeper into the other corridors and chambers. Each day a new step further in her explorations, each day some other answers that he kept to himself. He didn't tell her what the black liquid in the cargo is, though she suspected he knew. Never mind. She'll have her own answers, all she needed was him to warn her if he saw danger.

And one day, she spotted danger herself.

"What do you think that is," she asked and pointed towards a black smudge on one of the ship's ribbed walls, as if someone had drawn three lines in tar.

"I wouldn't touch it if I were you," David said.

"I'm not stupid," she replied, and cautiously drew nearer. She brought her gloved hand to hover close to the marks, but didn't disturb them. The liquid looked too much like the fluid from the cargo.

"I know, from direct experience, that it won't pass through the suit," David said. "Assuming it is the cargo, of course."

The liquid shone in the torchlight. It seemed sticky, but, ever so slowly, it slid down the wall surface. Those stripes would not have remained there for more than a day, let alone several thousand years.

"This is fresh," she whispered, and turned around, flashlight in hand, looking franticly for other signs. "Who put it there?"

"How should I know?"

"You see things and you're not telling me. Who else is on this ship?"

"I don't know. We've never been to this corridor before."

Her heart beat so loud she thought she could hear its echo through the ship's hallways. "Let's go back, right now," she said, and strode to the safety of the control chamber. Three lines in black fluid, like clawmarks ... Some kind of creature stalked her. At least she had locked the access gate, it seemed the proper thing to do. Wait, had she locked it? Why should she, until five minutes ago she had thought she was alone with David. In between her memories refusing to make sense, and the shadows caused by her trembling torchlight seeming to come alive and make a grab at her, the return journey seemed to take forever. She pushed on the gate to the control room- locked, thank God- and a mere few moments later, back inside with the gate closed behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief and dropped the duffel bag.

"Ow," David said.

She couldn't help laughing a bit, even as she panted for air. "We've made it. Made it back." Her heart somewhat more steady, she gave the control chamber a quick check up- everything was where she thought it would be. Her little bivuac near the control chair. A toolbox, scattered somewhat haphazardly. David's headless body in the other end of the room. The dark, closed sleeping cells, all empty. Everything as it's been all the past months.

"If you have any idea what that was, you'd better tell me," she said and picked up the duffel bag with David's head. "Any clue that might have a connection, everything."

"That is very vague."

"Ok. Who and what was supposed to be on this ship?"

"Just Engineers, and they were meant to sleep inside the pods. There were no other passengers, and there were only the vases as cargo. I've seen nothing in any inscription to suggest otherwise. Why do you even suppose the marking was fresh?"

"It was leaking, and it wouldn't look like that for long." She cursed under her breath, "I should have checked the cargo again."

"Quite a conundrum, indeed. Assuming you are correct and there is someone or something else on the ship, you wouldn't want them to have access to that particular cargo."

"Can we lock it down?"

"There might be a way. What are your plans?"

She rummaged through her supplies and picked up the toolbox- high time she got it tidy anyway. "I don't know. But if I go out there again I must have some preparation." The fireman axe felt good and heavy in her hand, and she tried a few swings to get accustomed to its balance. Better than nothing.

"Might I suggest something," David said.

"If it's to reattach you to your body, my answer is still no."

"Worth a try. If it becomes necessary, two could fight better than one, and I believe I am stronger than you."

"And that's why you'll stay a head in a bag." The axe almost slips from her grip in one of her more adventurous swings; good thing he, from inside the duffel bag, couldn't see that. "All right," she said, once satisfied her axe technique was passable. "We need to go shut off that cargo bay."

Previous days had her traipse through the ship in comparison. Yes, the thing was an alien leviathan built by beings she couldn't comprehend. But then again, for all its strangeness, it was more or less dead. Any feeling of safety that she might have indulged in had left her however, and she stepped with more care and less sound. She also relied on the flashlight less, and more on hearing; if something lurked out there, the flashlight would only give away her location. And it prevented her from properly using the axe, which she carried in her hands, ready to strike at any moment's notice.

The cargo hold however refused to be shut down.

"But this really is what you need to do to get the door closed," David said. "Perhaps the mechanism is broken."

She would punch the unruly door, but thought better of it. That would achieve nothing, except more noise. "Let's try another of the entrances."

With David's instructions, this one closed. "See, I've told you, it's that door's fault."

"Damn it," she whispered.

"I do not think repairing it is an option."

"I know, I know." It wasn't at all clear how to even expose whatever mechanism the door had, let alone the fact that she'd have no idea what to do if she saw it. Damn it all. Despite two thousand years of mothballing, most of the ship seemed to work as well as it did on its inauguration. Of all the things here, the cargo door got to fail? She turned her attention to the columns of vases. Thousands of them, maybe. No way she'd move those anywhere, and she certainly wouldn't take them to what for now became her safe space, the control room.

Besides, it seemed like it would be too late to move them. A tiny black puddle drips from one of the vases; she didn't remember seeing it the previous time she had gone to see the cargo. She'd have noticed. Surely. That liquid was too dangerous to leave around unchecked.

"What do you think they want with this stuff," she asked.

"I won't speak about the Engineers-"

"I mean whatever's on this ship. And David, this is no time for games, if you're not telling me something now, I'll ..."

"Get killed by some alien creature? I assure you, Elizabeth, that is far from my intentions." He thought for a moment. "Could you lift me out so I can get a better look?"

She took him out of the duffel bag and held him close to the leaking vase.

"There don't seem to be traces left on either side. No footprints."

"Can you smell anything?"

"No trail that I can follow. Whatever this was, they got what they wanted and left. And weren't too sloppy about it."

Every distant creak or gust of air suddenly needed an explanation, and she jumped to her feet, axe raised, when she heard a distant low crunch. No other noise followed it however, except the faint echoes of her accelerated breath.

"That was your own boot you got scared of," David said. "It is clear that you are under stress."

An image of that axe crashing down over his head flashed in her mind, but no, that would only leave her more desperate. "You're not helping."

So, no way to close the cargo. Maybe closing it would have achieved nothing anyway, but this was a thought she'd rather not have. If whatever- or whoever- else is on the ship with her could open its doors, then she was not safe anywhere. But she needed to know what she was facing. "These cameras," she said, pointing to the shoulder mounted one on her suit, "how much video can they store?"

"A few hours. Maybe half a day if nothing much changes in their viewcone. Aah, you want to leave it behind, right. Clever."

"I'll leave two behind, mine and the one from your suit."

"Interesting idea."

Flattery wouldn't get him anywhere, if that was his plan, but there were more important things to do than play with David. She checked that the forearm display would be able to connect with and reveal the contents of a camera's memory, then unmounts hers. Where to put it so that it wouldn't be conspicuous and keep watch over the open doorway? Eventually, she settled on a nook between two vases.

"You should check that lens glare doesn't give its location away," David said.

A good idea, and she tested as told. "If only you were always this helpful."

"If you get eaten, I don't get fixed. Our relationship is based on mutual but grudgingly accepted need."

"So it is."

"Doesn't have to be that way, of course. You can trust me, you don't have to fight alone."

"I'd rather take my chances against whatever this is than you. And you know I'm right, even if you were honest now. If I give you any of your power back, you won't know how it's appropriate to use it."

A couple of other trips back and forth between the control room, and after installing the second camera in the cargo bay, Elizabeth set herself into her bivuac to sleep. Quite a day. She and David were not alone on the ship. Hopefully the thing, or the person- it was difficult to know which would be worse- could be stopped by the ship's doors. She had to believe it, if she was going to get any sleep at all. But, though she always said she chose her beliefs, it seemed that choice did not get made by conscious will. She willed herself to sleep, she willed herself to ignore the danger outside, but couldn't.

Memories of an old camping trip played through her mind. Someone, maybe Charlie, told her there were great and poisonous spiders in the area. Try as she might, she couldn't sleep underneath the sky then, as she used to. She liked seeing the stars when she looked up from her sleeping bag. But she rather hated spiders, and ended up spending that night in maybe-Charlie's tent.

She still couldn't remember his face.

A dream of spiders swimming through oil and lashing their triple-taloned legs wakes her. They were everywhere and she must have screamed.

"Are you all right," David asks.

"Yes, it was just a dream." She rubbed her eyes awake. "Just a dream. Let's see if the cameras caught anything."

As always, he was pleased to get the few minutes with his body and get some more charge to his head battery. As for her, she could barely eat. Anticipation killed her appetite, and the Engineers' rations didn't taste that good even at the best of times.

She exited the control room and prepared to lock the door behind her, then stopped, frozen.

"What is it," David asked.

Three lines, drawn in black fluid, on the outside of the door.

In what feelt like less than a second, she got back inside, and hid in the control chair.

"This is probably not a good time, however-"

"Shut up." She sighed. "Let me think."

Those cameras, she needed them.

"Are you sure this is wise," he asked when she prepared to go outside the control room again.

But she didn't answer, and pressed on. No way she could survive cooped up in there worrying every second about what else might be aboard. Not for ... however many months it would still take to reach the destination. She found the cameras as she left them, and no new trace of activity in the cargo bay. The question was whether they caught anything.

"Any clues," David asked, perched on his body for one of his daily 'meals' of power.

Fast-forwarding through several hours on one camera revealed nothing. But the other one- nine hours after she left it, smack in the middle of the night, something approached the cargo bay. Too dark, too far for the camera to see, but there was a silhouette in one of the corridors.

"Are you sure it's not an artefact of the recording," David asks.

"See for yourself."

"Hm. That indeed seems cause for concern. Looks vaguely humanoid."

They don't speak for several minutes, each pondering the implications of the find. A humanoid figure- not an Engineer. Too small and scrawny for that. And, hopefully, unable to do anything but leave smears around the place. Or so she wanted to believe, but even so the nibbling doubt didn't want to go away. Not safe. Not that she was ever safe, but certainly not now when danger had a body, glimpsed through the distance by the camera. She'd have to set the cameras again and gather more information.

"Make me whole first," David protests when she picked up the duffel bag and axe.

"Don't worry, we're not going far." Don't worry- easy to say, but she had never been so worried. Even when she stepped into the corridor away from the control room, her axe raised, poised to strike. But she had to know. That's why she was here. She hid the cameras as best she could in the corridor, then wasted no time to retreat. More waiting, but it would be worth something if she found out who or what she shared the ship with. And then what? That, she will figure out later, when the time comes.

Once more sleep got difficult to come by. She remembered Charlie- or something that called itself Charlie- changing into something else and then burning alive. She remembered the giant squid that had come out of her womb, and how it fought the Engineer. She remembered the grainy frames of Fifield that she saw, plunging a pick-axe into a guard's spine. And then her mind conjures other monsters, with long polished heads and pipes coming out of their backs, whose mouths contain other mouths, and jump out of the bass-reliefs on LV223. However hard she told her mind to stop torturing itself, the images didn't stop, and she was alone and small and, in truth, inadequate to fight them.

The door opened.

She didn't make a sound. Gently she creeped through her bivuac to look at the control room around her. No one stood by the door, but she certainly had heard it, open and close even. She'd call for David, but she couldn't risk a sound. Time slowed to a trickle and the silence got so profound she could hear the valves of her heart as it pumped. But her stalker didn't reveal itself, so she'd try her hardest to be invisible as well. After what seemed like an eternity, the door opened and closed again. This time she was prepared to watch it.

And saw a body, headless, a red light softly beeping where the space-suit's communicator module would be. David's body. She watched it creep along the control room, then place itself down where she'd expect it, then lying still.

"So it was you."

He doesn't answer.

"So it was you all along, you bastard."

Still silent.

"Why do you even need me if you could do that?"

"You try doing fine surgery with your head detached," he finally said. "Besides, I wouldn't be able to see enough inside my own neck to operate properly. But some simple commands to my body, that I can send."

"Why?"

"To scare some common sense into you, woman. Is that so hard to get? You don't need me as just a translator. You're going to meet gods, and go through dangers no one faced before. There's no reason to do it alone, and I certainly don't want to be there as just a spectator in your bag."

"You've just made sure that's all you'll be." However black the walls used to be, they now seemed red. "Put back together? Forget it."

Axe in hand, she approached his body. Just let him order the thing to rise, for she was ready to hack it to pieces.

"What are you doing?" he asked, for once showing fear.

She should just hack him to pieces regardless.

"Don't do something you'll regret-"

"Shut up." Yes, hack, slash, destroy him, scream and strike at the ship, God damn it, all of it. Shivering, she collapsed, crying, clutching at the axe handle as if it were the one thing keeping her afloat into a sea of darkness. All the rage, where had it come from? Yes, he'd done her wrong, repeatedly, but the ship must have got to her. Cooped up in one place for too long. No, she could not allow herself the rage. She wiped the tears from her last sobs and got back to her feet. "If you're really, really good for the rest of the journey, you'll get your body back."

"That is very good to hear."

"I'll just need to make sure that you'll be extra good."

"Pardon? Hey!"

"Don't worry, as long as you don't make me use this, I won't," she said and, axe in one hand, dragged his body with the other to one of the cryo-pods. "Just stay put for the rest of the trip and we'll all be fine," she hummed, and tied his arms and legs with the rappelling chord. Tensile strength of several tons. Not even he could break through that. Then she lifted him into the pod and closed it over him. Good luck getting out of there.

The next morning brings with it regret. The woman who saw red in front of her, and who almost chopped David to pieces, who was that? It's not the woman she wanted to be, that much she knows. Damned journey, but she couldn't turn back now. Not when she got so- she hesitated before turning on the star map. Last time she had seen it, David configured the ship's course. That had been ... some number of days ago. It felt like too many. And she didn't want to find out she had just as many to look forward to before her destination. No, she just had to get by, day by day. Look back on the time already spent, avoid the chasm yet to cross.

Something from the chair crackled.

"I believe we have a message," David said.

There was a voice inside the crackle, an Engineer speaking in their ancient tongue.

"What is he saying?" she asked. "How do I answer?"

David listened for a while. "Too late for that, I'm afraid. They've decided to come on board."

"Who's come on board? How? This is a warship!"

"Why, because one like it made short work of the Prometheus? There's no weapon anywhere on it except, maybe, its cargo. It's nothing but a glorified truck, and we seem to have crossed paths with another one."

"What are they saying?"

"They want you to identify yourself. And then they informed you of their intention to come on board."

"How do I outrun them?"

"I don't think you understand. They are right outside, and are docking now."

The floor nudged her sideways and a short faint rumble filled the ship.

"Well, you did want to meet your makers. Though it is a bit premature." He sounded worried. "Do I get my body now, at least?"

"Hush, please. I need to think." She put his head in the duffel bag, zipped it shut, and hanged it from her shoulder. Distant steps of heavy feet clad in that bonelike armor reminded her how little time remained. The axe- no, that wouldn't do anything, and she dropped it to the floor, just as three tall figures, all wearing a kind of gas mask on their face just like the Engineer head she had found once, entered the control chamber. They spotted her, and instinctually she raised her hands.

"Unarmed, I am unarmed," she said. "I mean you no harm."

"Prektu?" one of the giants said while he strode towards her.

"No harm, see?" She turned to the duffel bag and whispered. "What's he saying?"

"He's asking who you are."

"Elizabeth Shaw," she said, pointing to herself. "Elizabeth Shaw, yes?"

"Prekvie tu nausa ieuosim kveitsie? Prevo uemen?"

"What do I say? What do I-"

The giant lifted her by the throat and she kicked, helplessly, in the air.

"Ghehsialle," another giant said to the first. "Netulke potismelde."

"Conte preva naelle?" the first tells the other.

"Orbhomina. Sek sakmina."

The giant holding her put her down, but his fingers stayed wrapped around her throat. He took the duffel bag away, and peered inside. Whether its contents surprised him she couldn't tell, but he took out David's head and showed it to his two companions.

"I'll need that, please," Elizabeth said.

They didn't pay her much attention, only looking at her from time then back to David's head. After all, she couldn't go anywhere, not while the giant held her tight. Then they put the head back in the bag.

"Ghemsi," the Engineer holding her said and shoved her in front of him.

"Can I have that back, please?" She pointed towards the bag, but the Engineer just pushed her towards the exit again.

"Ghemsi, orbhomina."

Their ship turned out to be somewhat different from the Juggernaught. It had a similar style of interior decoration, the ridges and pipes that suggested the innards of a monster. But the walls had a pale shade of gray, with no metallic sheen. Rather than the musty darkness, harsh cold white light filled this other ship. Perhaps these came from a different faction?

Seven more Engineers- none of them wearing helmets- showed themselves when their three companions brought her aboard, among them four women, bald, tall, and chiselled like classical goddesses, and an elder-looking Engineer, skin wrinkled and squinting eyes weary. The seven argued among themselves, and with their three companions once they doff their gas masks, but she couldn't follow their words. They didn't seem happy from the tone of their voices, and given the glances they shot at her on occasion, she was the reason.

One of the Engineers who had boarded her ship still kept the bag with David's head. She needed David to make sense of what was happening. Without him, all sorts of scenarios presented themselves to her, none of them good. Perhaps they thought she had stolen the ship- which, in a way, was true- and discussed punishment. Or maybe these Engineers were another faction, though whether they'd turn out more friendly than those of LV-223 she couldn't know.

But David didn't seem keen to talk, even when they opened the bag to examine its contents. They did not seem fazed to see a head in there; perhaps they could tell, instantly, that in certain ways it was not 'real'. Not real as in flesh, in any case. They passed David's head among themselves, taking turns to admire the intricate workings of the inside of his neck, but whatever comments they made, David didn't see fit to answer. Probably for the best. Maybe they thought he was just some sort of prop; if he had started to speak, that might have startled them.

Eventually though they seemed to arrive at some sort of consensus. "Gheme," the Engineer with the bag tells her after he recovered David's head and leads her to what seemed a storage closet. He motioned for her to enter, and once she did, tossed the bag inside too, then closed the door, leaving her in darkness. The sound of his steps on metal told her they have gone away.

"David? Can you speak?"

"For a while," he whispered.

"What were they saying?"

"I have good news and less good news." He paused.

"Well? Give me the bad," she asked.

"They seem to take you for some kind of slave or servant. They believe you might be able to help them search for something, though what exactly I couldn't understand."

"Now isn't the time to hide things from me."

"I'm not. I got my head ripped off when I tried talking to them once, I'm not that fluent in their language."

"All right. What's the good news then?"

"Apart from the fact that they seem to want you alive and unharmed, wherever it is they are going to is very near. A couple days' worth of travel."

"We were that close to their world?"

"No. They're not going to their homeworld, not exactly. Just a detour."

Another long pause.

"How long can you last without recharging," she asked. "David? How long-"

"I will sleep. Wake me only when you need me."

And then, he spoke no more.


	9. Ch9- Lightning dragon

( **Author's notes** : originally I wanted E's story to be a two-parter, but the second part is really, really, REALLY long. Hence I split it into two parts. So here's, shall we say, part 1.5/2 of E's journey. Enjoy.)

* * *

The lock's creak woke her, and she saw one of the Engineers enter her cell, carrying two bowls in his hands. He crouched and placed them beside her- water and food, just like the rations she had used on the Juggernaught.

"Thank you," she said.

The giant didn't answer, not even in gesture. He just remained crouched, studying her, and made no sign of wanting to leave. Somewhat flustered, for she'd have preferred to eat in privacy, she took the bowl of food to her mouth and took a sip. Just like the Juggernaught's, it tasted like nothing. She put the bowl down for a moment- the giant still looked at her as if assessing her table manners, but didn't betray his conclusion. Well, what did he expect of her, really, just wish a spoon into existence? Her lips curled into a subtle smile at her own joke.

In truth, she was terrified. Maybe her captors didn't want her harmed just yet, or so David had told her. But they were powerful and, at least for now, beyond her understanding. Any excuse her mind got to distract itself was welcome. Any excuse to avoid facing that she didn't know what they wanted of her.

"I'm Elizabeth," she said after she took another few sips of the rations. "Elizabeth", she repeated, and pointed to herself.

The giant remained impassive.

"And you?" she asked, and pointed to him. "You?"

The giant refused to make conversation. Exasperated, she sighed, and finished the bowl of rations, at which point, and just as silent as before, the giant picked it up and took it away. He turned and pointed towards her before he left. "Orbhomina," he said, and locked her in darkness again.

"David? What does that mean?"

It seemed everyone had decided to give her the silent treatment however, since David's head, perhaps, thought this wasn't the time to waste power and answer her. Fine. She'd have to somehow figure out things for herself. Shouldn't be too hard. She'd heard that word before, a bunch of times, always referring to her. And David had told her they thought of her as some kind of servant or slave. So that's what it must have meant.

If David had spoken, perhaps he'd have called it ironic. All her life she'd thought herself a servant of God, and these beings were like gods to her, he'd say. But no, the God she served wouldn't need spaceships, and wouldn't have died. And, she hoped, He wouldn't want the world wiped clean again, not without reason.

Several hours later- she chose not to keep track of time- they came for her again. The elder and a woman, and they took her to their ship's bridge to witness a landing. Wherever they had wanted to go, they had reached it: a cloudy, rocky planet orbiting a dim star, its holographic image projected much the same like the orrery of the Juggernaught, but brighter, and more life-like. The ship pierced through the atmosphere without even a shake, and in a few minutes it landed gently on the planet surface, right at the foot of a large hill covered in wind-sculpted columns and bridges. Several small rivers flowed along one of the hillsides, and there was a lake between a few mounds of dirt not too far from the ship's landing spot. There was no snow nor ice; from what she could see through the holograms, the temperature outside was mild like a low mountain top in summer.

There didn't seem to be anyone else here however. Perhaps the planet was inhabitted, but where they had landed there was no hint of artificial structure. Just grassland, and the hill; no roads, nothing that looks like a building anywhere. Nothing that would have made this look like the homeland of a great civilization. Then again, the one civilization she knew well, Earth, might not have been the best yardstick to judge others with.

The same three Engineers that had boarded her ship prepared to go to the planet surface, and their gestures made it clear they wanted her to come along. They didn't seem concerned enough to put their helmets on this time, so if they felt safe with the air, so did she. Not that she had much choice; her own helmet remained on the Juggernaught.

Once outside, one of the Engineers grabbed her by the arm and dragged her along towards the hill.

"You're hurting me," she said, trying to explain her words through gestures. "I'll go, I'll go with you, no need to pull on my arm."

Just like before, the Engineer seemed little concerned by her words. Instead, he moved his hand across the surface of a very steep, wind beaten cliff, and knocked. It rang hollow, but nothing else happened.

"Ene!" said another Engineer, the one that had brought her food.

The Engineer ran, and for a moment she feared he might rip her arm off so she ran along as fast as she could to keep up, and get to the place the other called from. A low and narrow crack opened at the base of the cliff; much too small for an Engineer to fit through, but maybe she could manage it.

They certainly seemed to think so. "Perksi," the Engineer holding her arm said to her, and pointed towards the crack, repeatedly. "Perksi, sek uersi." He gestured with his hand, a movement between a tweak and a press, like operating some invisible control. "Ghemsi," he said, and finally released her.

She looked at them in turn for a few moments; still impossible to tell, from their expressions, what they expected to happen. It was very clear however they expected her to go through the crack, so she got to the ground and crawled. It was so narrow she needed to breathe out at times to make progress, and the mix of clay and gravel scraped against her knees and elbows. The space suit hadn't been designed for this. Still, after a couple minutes of effort, she had almost got through, and the corridor widened, just enough to allow her to turn sideways. The yellow light from her suit revealed limestone all around her, mixed with the occasional jagged cube of silex, a sight familiar from caves on Earth.

"Ghemsi," came a voice from outside.

"Whatever," she whispered. The tunnel still went on for a while, after a bend, and she didn't see behind it yet. All right, she'd press on. Probably just a dead end, and she'd then have to crawl out and somehow explain to them there was nothing there.

But, though the bend in the tunnel revealed a dead end, a segmented, metal column ran along the wall and buried itself in the floor of gravel. Obviously artificial, but whatever controls it had were likely buried beneath the layer of gravel and silt. The tunnel must have been much taller once, but now abandoned, and in disrepair, it got filled by sediments washed in by rain or rivers.

"Esti ane?"

She dug around the metal pipe, exposing segment after segment. It wasn't just their voices, her own curiosity pushed her on. She had to know what they were searching for. The pit grew deeper around the pipe, and her fingers hurt, then bled, but she had to see this through. And when she scraped against a faucet wheel- eureka. There it is, the control. With renewed vigor, she freed it just enough so she could turn it- much easier than expected. The metal seemed immune to corrosion.

At first, nothing happened. Then the sound of escaping steam came from some place far to her side, and the rumble of earth plowed by a blade of metal. The Engineers outside chattered again, planning some new exploration. She took this as the signal to return to them.

When she reached the outside, they still argued, unsure of whether to step through a passageway newly emerged inside the cliff-face. One of them pointed to her to go forward, but another disagreed. The elder's voice came faint through an intercom. They were not yet ready to go in. Perhaps the speed with which they- or rather, she- had found the entrance surprised them.

The three Engineers put on their gas masks.

"Wait," she said, pointing towards her head. "Helmet?" Unclear whether the bowl shape she tried to suggest with her hands had any meaning to them. "My helmet is on the ship," she said and pointed to the Juggernaught.

One of the Engineers collected small rocks and didn't even look at her. The others ignored her as well.

"God damnit," she muttered.

After a few minutes, the rock collecting Engineer stepped in front of the group, and they entered the cave, dragging her along. The air smelled of nothing except the mud on the floor and the calcite dust on the limestone walls. Might have been a tunnel in some cave on Earth, but wider and taller than most cave passages she could remember, and large enough so that even the giant Engineers walked about unhindered. No slime, no running water carrying who knows what kind of life. Nothing but cracked dry stones fallen from the ceiling ages ago. It seems the water that had covered the entrance control in silt did not get in here; the entrance must have been shut tight.

With the entrance left far behind, the Engineers switched something in their suits and a cold white glow emanated from them like sparks from deep sea fish. The Engineers themselves appeared as from a different world, separated not by light-years of distance and aeons of time. In their suits, the color and texture of rock, they stood like primordial gods waking the void into existence.

Every once in a while, the rock collecting Engineer tossed one of the pebbles forward. It skipped along the larger rocks, and its clicking sounds echoed far through the cavern. At first she thought this was a way to draw something out, like an animal. Perhaps they had brought her there as bait, or sacrifice. But nothing answered the pebbles' echoes; the caverns were well and truly dead. Then perhaps nothing waited here, nothing alive, and the pebbles were some kind of ritual, with only symbolic meaning and no practicality.

Then she learned it was, in fact, very practical.

One of the thrown pebbles didn't bounce. Instead, it darted towards its landing spot and smashed against the rock, but the pieces didn't fly on. Rather, they got squashed flat, pressed down by an invisible force. The Engineer threws a few more pebbles to demarcate the area- whatever lies beneath the stone, it pulled things towards it with such strength that stepping anywhere near meant death. She looked towards the ceiling- very tall, and with chunks missing. The flat slabs she saw on the floor in the strange area might not have always been flat. Some kind of gravity amplifier. The caverns might be dead, but they are not safe.

The corridor reached a fork, but both sides became too short for the Engineers to go through. "Ghemsi," one of them said and pushed her towards one of the smaller tunnels.

"No," she answered, and pointed towards the bizarre area of concentrated gravity. "I don't know this place." The Engineer wanted to grab her, but she slid away. "No. If you want to kill me, you can do it here. I'm not going there," she said, all the while trying to indicate with her hands that she had no intention of stepping on something like God knows what that thing was and get crushed into a bloody sheen over the limestone.

For once, her words had an effect on them, and the rock collecting Engineer approached and pushed the other one aside. "Neano," he said, pointing to the small tunnel and the gravity concentrate. "Neano," he repeated, as if to reassure her no traps lay there. She shouldn't have but, for some reason, she believed him. His voice, unlike the others', didn't sound like an order barked at a lesser being, and instead sounded like he actually cared that she felt safe.

"All right," she said and nodded, her arms slightly raised to her sides in what she assumed is a human universal deferential gesture. "I'll go. Would be easier if you took the time to teach me your words." She hesitated a moment before stepping through the narrow corridor. "Elizabeth," she said, and pointed to herself.

"Erulim," the Engineer who reassured her said.

The narrower tunnel turned out a dead end. Nothing in it out of place or worth investigating, but then again, things weren't what they seemed here. Some patches of ground had more gravity around them, God knew what else lay in waiting for an unwary intruder. She returned, empty handed, to the Engineers. "Nothing," she said.

"Neano," Erulim told the others.

The Engineer who kept barking orders at her shoved her to the other tunnel in the fork. She turned to Erulim, and he nodded for reassurance. Well, all right. This other tunnel sloped down slightly; irregular collapsed slabs littered its floor. It didn't go too far either, however at its end there was another segmented metal pipe like the one she manipulated to open the cliff-side. No tap to turn, however; must have been buried under several very heavy lumps of limestone. No way she'd dig through those.

"Neano," Erulim said when seeing her come back out of the tunnel.

"No, there is something," she said, and imitated turning a wheel. Her attempt at being helpful however caused several minutes of frustration while she tried to explain why she couldn't get at the wheel to turn it, especially since only Erulim had the patience to listen and watch her.

Eventually, he turned to the others and said something to appease them, more or less. Whatever they muttered, she could tell, wasn't pleasant.

"Lepa", Erulim said, turning to her and giving the wall a good slap with his hand. "Lepa," he said, and held one of the pebbles he gathered.

"Stone," she answered. "Lepa." Well, high time someone tried to teach her what went on. The other two Engineers made their way outside- clearly, they expected no more progress that day. She and Erulim walked slower, with him pointing at various objects and giving them a name, which she repeated.

Later that day, after Erulim had escorted her escorted back to her cell, she took David's head in her hands. "I know you can hear me," she said. "It's all right, no need to wake up yet. I'll do the talking. I'm learning their language you know. Not as fast as you would, but I'll manage. I'll get to ask them for myself ... They are ... they're not what I expected. They seem lost too. You should have seen them today, you'd laugh like you always do. At them, at me trying to talk to them. But I'll get better. They're not that ... scary now, they are just lost." She lay on the ground and placed his head to the side. "Thanks for listening. Good night, David."

The next few days proved backbreaking. Whatever technology the Engineers might have had to move stone around, this particular crew didn't have it, or at least didn't trust her with anything beyond a hammer and chisel. And, of course, she was the one who had to clear the path around the metal pipe, blow by blow against the lime slabs; chipping them to pieces, then carrying the pieces out. Hard work, and more than once she cursed them- not that they'd have heard or understood. They should have been doing this, not her. This was their world, more or less.

But, always, the evening brought a new perspective on the day. Yes, her muscles ached, but her brain, turned off by the rhythmic and simple chore of digging, became vibrant and she absorbed the words and phrases Erulim taught her. He did all the talking on the first day of digging. The second, she interjected a word or two in response. By the third day she could muster very simple sentences. They must have sounded silly to him. Their words were supposed to change, in several ways depending on their function in a sentence, and though the changes were quite regular, she always forgot them while she spoke. But, with a smile and a nod, he told her he understood.

He also didn't wear his helmet in the cave. No poisons in the air, he told her, but his real reason might have been different. She didn't have her helmet, it's only fair that he faced the same odds. Or so she preferred to think his reason was.

Sometimes, in her cell, she talked to David- in the Engineers' tongue, at least for a few sentences. She didn't expect, nor get any response. But other times, between the work in the cave and the language lesson and too tired for anything else, she slept.

It took sixteen days of hard work to get to the next control and open the next stretch of the cave, but, all things considered, she didn't mind. Better ignore the barking Engineer; she did this to help herself, and Erulim. She'd be able, soon enough, to ask them the question she wanted, and hope to understand its answer.

The deeper they went, the clearer it got that this was no ordinary cave. She learned that there were more traps here than just gravity concentrates. Erulim showed her a cloud of yellow fog, resting in a sinter pool, and warned her that it would seep through her flesh and dissolve the bones inside. But her own queries about what purpose the cave had went unanswered. Every time she asked, he just turned sullen, as if she had committed a great offense, and it took some hours before he forgave her and taught her again- as long as she refrained from questions about the cave's purpose. Soon enough, she could follow the Engineers' conversations as if they were in English.

"We're close," one of the Engineers said. The one who always took pleasure in ordering her around. "Send her forward."

"Wait," Erulim said, and checked the tunnel. "This passage isn't like the others."

"She'll handle it, won't you, slave?"

Erulim chided him with his gaze, but stayed silent.

"You know of the gravity spots and how to spot them, you know not to step through the fog, you know not to be scared of the silence," the Engineer continued. "And even you know how to dig, so get in there and dig."

She didn't care for his posturing. If there was one more gateway of metal to open between them and their purpose, it means her own answers were near, and nothing else mattered. One more tunnel, one more control to dig out of collapsed limestone rubble? No sweat. Not now, not after a year or more in the Juggernaught, not after a month of crawling and digging in this cave. And, whether because the nearness of the goal renewed her energy or because this tunnel was more protected than others, she reached the controls with ease.

She heard the rumble that signaled another iris gateway opening, but this time more about the cave changed. Faint green-white glows appeared like dewdrops from the walls, and thin filaments like molds rose up like hair charged with electricity. These were things Erulim hadn't told her of, and she had the sense not to touch them of her own accord. She moved towards the passage exit, careful to avoid the phosphorescent drips and the filaments. Her heart beat faster- the things seemed to grow, slowly, and she had better walk fast since the space between them grew thinner.

Just as she was about to exit the passage and return to the Engineers, a delicate sound of ripping fabric behind her made her turn, to see blue sparks receding into the walls where a tangle of filaments like a spiderweb of frozen plasma fibers had been, before it was broken by her touch. Such beautiful colors traveled-

"Come!" Erulim grabbed her arm, his large eyes fixed on hers. "We must leave. Hurry!"

Why the urgency? She tried to find the words to ask, but he dragged her, faster and faster, through the tunnels. Didn't he worry they might step into one of the supergravity pools?

"It's all right," she managed to say as they exited the complex, "it was n-"

Pain. In her chest. She doubled over, arms clutching at her breast. Salt taste in her mouth. Her skin beaded with myriad drops of sweat. Pain. She couldn't breathe, and every movement of her chest sent new spikes into her heart. Her heart. Its beat erratic. She was dying. Somewhere in the distance Erulim called to her, and she couldn't understand. All she saw was dark- how had night fallen so soon? A blue moon with large black eyes, the only light source in the sky ... was it her it watched over?

Thud. A hammer crushed her chest. Then crushed it again, and again, forever. Let me die. But the blows continued, rhythmic and ruthless. Darkness threatened to swallow the blue moon. Thud. Its shine renewed, and she would scream for it to make the pain stop, take her soul and let her rest. Thud. Rest was denied. She couldn't cry with screams, she cried with tears instead. Thud. This had to be hell. No reason to count the torment. Thud. It would never stop. The blue moon above her so distant and serene ... Thud. It got clearer now, was it his face?

She turned to the side and vomited. The dull ache in her ribs didn't prevent her to bring back all the meals she ever had.

"Elizabete?"

It proved futile to try and spit out the acrid taste. She wiped her mouth and turned to face him. Erulim, the blue giant, crouched over her, his black eyes opened wide with concern. A broken vial lay on the ground beside him, half of its contents spilled, half of them, she was sure, coursing through her blood and responsible for the foul taste in her mouth.

"Can you hear me," he said.

She couldn't do much more than nod.

"You'll be all right, just ... " He stopped, mouth ajar, as if fighting for the words to come out. "Just don't walk into spider webs anymore."

That was no spiderweb, but whatever it was, her poor grasp of his language wouldn't allow her to give it a better name anyway. Again he talked in simple words, for her sake. She didn't have the strength to be angry at the moment. If not for him, she would be dead, and she didn't quite feel back among the living just yet.

She cleaned her mouth as best she could with her hand and sat herself down; too lightheaded to stand just yet. "Thank you," she told him.

His face darkened, and he turned away. "You better sleep," he said, then left her to her exhaustion. He strode away, in fact, as if to put as much distance from her as he could, as quickly as possible. As if some kind of guilt or shame chased him away.

It took her several minutes to recover, for her balance to be steady and the taste to cease. And indeed, her mind was almost a blank that only craved rest. She trudged to her cell- no need to be walked there this time- and lay herself down on her makeshift bed. If David were to finally break his silence and say anything about the way she looked, she wouldn't have care to hear it anyway, and she fell fast asleep.

She was allowed more rest the next day. No crawling, digging, or carrying stuff away. Not for her. The others, Erulim too, had gone to explore the caverns in the complex. They would need her and her small stature again soon enough, but this day was hers to use as she saw fit. And she saw fit to go to the lake, and allow herself some semblance of hygiene.

Her suit fell to the gravel on the lake shore, and then her underwear. All of that called for washing too, but first her own body needed tending. She breathed in, then waded into the lukewarm water, relishing the caress of its surface against her skin as she dove. A moment later, she emerged, and cleared her eyes to look at her reflection. On Earth she would have been called strong, and yet, she couldn't help but think of the Engineer women and their impossibly muscular bodies. Once, she'd have thought them too much, too bulky, but now, gazing at herself, she felt somehow inadequate. Inadequate for whom?

It's when she tried to look at the reflection of her back that she saw it: a bramble of new pink veins bifurcating in a dragonlike pattern stretched from her left shoulder to her left buttock. A fresh scar, this one left by the frozen plasma web. Surprise, yes, but no fear; rather, she was just curious about this new mark on her body. Her breath caught for a second as she moved her hand across it. It doesn't hurt.

Quite the opposite.

The monster's veins swelled red beneath her touch. Her thoughts drifted to flesh of different bodies pulsing in communion, and her hands moved to more familiar, easier to reach locations. No, wait. There may be other ways.

She looked at herself again. Small and scrawny compared to the Engineer women, but she had made it this far. It should have counted for something. She almost looked like one of them. Almost. She took the scalpel from the tool pouch in her suit, its small blade sharp enough to cut a strand of falling silk. Or hair. All of it. And now she does look like one of them. Like flesh disguised as marble.

Once content with her own cleanliness, she took her underwear from the shore and got it as white as she could. The fabric had looked so high tech when she had left Earth, the brand well renowned for its resiliency and ability to conduct moisture away from the body. It just seemed old and worn now. Fraying in places. But after all, she herself has been through a lot and with the scars to show it, so no wonder.

No, what she suddenly disliked is how dull it would have looked once she would have put it on. Just wrap fabric straps around the body, just get coverage, with no consideration for design. Maybe it was practical, but she wanted more than mere practicality.

She wrapped the strap meant to cover her chest around herself- not much variation she could do with it, but she only used one of its clasps to secure it, and makes sure that this clasp stayed visible between her breasts. The strap and patches that used to make up her underpants she instead wrapped in a skirt, long on one thigh, almost non-existent on the other, again held together, precariously, by a single clasp. One twitch of an exploring hand and the fabric would have fallen and left her naked.

She watched her reflection in the lake as she swayed her hips and took a few steps. They call her slave. For once, she wanted to look the part, to seem as if a master's touch would expose her, to move so that the master would himself be captive to her spell. Eyes lowered, fabric straining against her forms and the clasps that bind them, an invitation. How long can you deny yourself? Take me.

When nighttime came and they returned to camp, she waited. He'd be alone. There he was, lost in his thoughts by the fire. She walked towards him, as she had practiced by the lake, and the gravel crunches softly beneath her bare feet. His head in his hands, he didn't seem to notice her. She reaches his side, her arms caressing his broad shoulders while she stepped around him. He didn't turn to see her. She sat herself in his lap. He stirred, but to move away. She insisted, and put her hand on his chin to try and draw his face towards her. He grabbed her hand.

"Stop," he said. Machinelike, neutral. But she didn't want to hear it, and her other hand now caressed his face.

"I said stop it," he said, and now both her hands were in his grasp and she was as powerless as she wanted to feel. But he used his hold of her to pull her off him, and then push her away. She stumbled to the ground.

"Stop it," he repeated. And seemed to mean it.

"Why?"

He rose to his feet, a god looking down on her, and turned away. If only she could have curled so tight to sink into the ground beneath her. "Why?" she asked again. And again, but he took no notice and joined his companions beyond a hill. "Why," she whispered and clutched at the clay beneath her. The small clay clump shattered when she threw it away as far as she could. "Why." Anger. And the dragon scar on her back pulsed again.

She ripped off the straps that covered her nakedness and threw her back against the ground again. Every crevice, every indentation of the earth felt like a lover's touch against the new lightning mark on her body and she crawled, back against the dirt, to renew those touches. Her body hadn't known such arousal since ... she couldn't remember when. The ground against her dragon scar, her fingers venturing between her thighs and on her breast to do what a man should, she held in a scream, feeding it like a monster to see how strong it could get before it defeated her. Stronger. She bit her lip hard and felt the salty taste of blood. Stronger. Her back arched, then plunged towards the earth again, to feel its rough caress once more. Stronger than her.

She screamed. Loud and primal. She screamed for her pleasure, uninhibited. She screamed so he can hear, and know what he was missing.

None of them came to check on her, not when she stopped, either. Spent, she put herself on her feet and hastily wrapped the underwear straps to cover herself again. It still seemed wrong to walk around naked, even if no one else cared to watch. And besides, David's head was in her cell. He'd watch, and say something condescending. Something typical of him.

"Shut up," she said, preemptively, when she entered her cell.

Uncharacteristically, he complied, and the several moments of silence that follow are just ... unnatural. She glared at him, like a dare. Just try and anger me.

"Is there something wrong," David asked.

The question- or rather, the tone- took her aback. Nothing of the superior or greasy.

"Is there something wrong," he repeated. "Please don't mind me saying so, but that was ... very conspicuous."

Her own tone was brisk. "What of it?"

"I assume you wanted to prove something."

"Like what?"

"Any number of present themselves. One that stands out is a call for help."

"I'll have none of your -help-, if that's what you're thinking."

"I know, Elizabeth. I've come to terms with that long ago. Your loss." The contours of a smile could be seen through the shadows, yet it's not one of David's usual superior smirks. "But then, it's my loss too."

The day after it was time to resume work again, so once more she wore her suit and got dragged along to carry rocks and dig through tunnels the Engineers couldn't access. They barked orders at her, she did as told, barely looking any of them in the eye. But of them all, Erulim she avoided, and he in turn avoided her. Something like a force field stood between them; neither looked the other's way, and any accidental glance broke immediately. They didn't move near; they didn't move apart either, preferring instead to ignore that the other one existed in an attempt to make things easier.

But today was special. They talked in big words she didn't understand yet, about the evidence gathered from the previous digs. They had sent her so many times and without a purpose, just to see what lay at the end of passages too narrow for them, but this time there was a method to their madness. Something about a broken conduit she must fix, and in which tunnel she might have found it. And when she did, and fixed the broken conduit, the earth shook. Something, most definitely, changed.

She returned from the corridor to find the Engineers gathered around what before was a large wall of rock. Wall gone, the entrance to a large hall became visible. Unlike the rest of the caves, it seemed artificial. No carstic processes had created those tanglings of pipes, and the ribs and spines that supported the ceiling were not nature's work either. They resembled the inside of the control room of the Juggernaught, but managed to look even more ancient, carved into gray rock rather than shiny metal.

The group of Engineers- and with them, she as well- moved into the hall. There was still a large distance to the center, but the featureless floor made it so she couldn't tell why they chose to stop at this particular location. One of the Engineers began to sing, a tune similar to what David had played on the flute to wake the Juggernaught. An instinct committed those notes to her memory; the Engineer's tune had a stark simplicity that she couldn't forget.

But only one Engineer sang, yet two voices carried the song, as if fighting each other, as if the Engineer tried, through his voice, to teach the other, the invisible and unruly. And when the tune finished, the ground near the hall's center flashed orange.

"Move," one of the taller Engineer said and shoved her forward.

"No." Erulim. He brushed her aside, not caring that she fell, and he ran. With arms outstretched he ran, powerful legs vaulting him forward, towards the center of the hall.

It took less than a second. His limbs twisted in unnatural angles, then his suit ripped itself to shreds while his flesh got ground into blue black pulp by some invisible machine. He had been there a moment ago. Now, all that remained was a stream of liquified tissue, still caught in hidden machinery that kept it in midair and along complex spiral paths. An arcane symbol made of levitating blood and guts. He was dead, and she was on her knees.

That, the floating symbol, was supposed to be her. She froze in place. It was her they had wanted to sacrifice, all along.

Another, younger Engineer followed in Erulim's footsteps. Cautious, but steady in his step, he approached the center of the spirals of blood, where a black swarm of particles coalesced into a sphere. There was not just care, but reverence in how the Engineer moved, a solemn pace that suggested a moment of tremendous importance: a conversation with a god, earned by human sacrifice. He sat down beside the sphere for a moment, in silent dialog. The sphere vibrated, the particles adjusting themselves along pentagonal tilings on its surface. A flash. It was gone.

The young Engineer started to rock back and forth. He moaned, childlike. He staggered to his feet, and an occasional high pitched cry escaped his lips as he walked, aimless. He didn't seem to notice anything, nor anyone around him, but the others didn't rush to help. It's only when he chanced out of the perimeter that the Elder spoke to him.

"What did it say?"

No answer.

"Did you find anything?"

The young Engineer shouted and bashed his hands against his skull. He coiled in a fetal position, right beside Elizabeth, and she got pushed away so the others could tend to him. They asked him his name. They asked each other what to do. They dragged him out. They left her alone, kneeling on the rocks, looking at where the sphere had been, where Erulim had ...

They let her retire to her cell. Whatever it was they tried, they didn't expect to work again on the same day. But, and this had gotten all too clear though she heard no one say it, they expected to try again tomorrow.

"David?" she asked, peering through the darkness to where his head lay.

"Yes?"

"I will put you back together now."

"That is good news. What made you change your mind?"

"My time is running out." She told him of what she had seen in the caves. Of Erulim, how he had sacrificed himself so that she wouldn't have been the victim, how the other Engineer had gone mad talking to the sphere. How the sphere had seemed to hold the answers for all the questions anyone might have, should the questioner be ready. How the Engineers, most likely, wanted to query it again since they hadn't find whatever they were looking for.

"So it would seem, indeed. Your time is running out."

"They want to kill me," she said, and hoisted the bag upon her shoulder. "David, could you- do you know what happened here?"

"I have a vague idea, yes."

"That sphere, I need to speak with it."

"Does not seem wise. The Engineer did not take well to the experience."

"It's all I have left. They'll try again. Soon. And when they do, I will die anyway."

"And I suppose you need someone to get crushed?"

"Yes." She lifted his head and brought it against her face, to glare into his vacant eyes. "Not you though. I need your help."

A faint smile formed on his lips. "Not going gently into that dark night, are you."

"Not going alone. And I know just who to take with me."

His smile widened. "Such determination. But what's in it for me?"

"Your time is running out too."

"I suppose so. Hm. The sphere. Perhaps it can help us both find what we look for, then."

She tucked his head in the bag and pushed the cell door- open, of course, like it had been for weeks. They had stopped thinking she was worth locking up. Where would she go to? What would she do? As far as they were concerned, she was a tamed pet, one that could even pretend to have a conversation now, but not a threat.

Their mistake.


	10. DMS ch 10 - What do you want?

One of the Engineer women saw her go towards the Juggernaught, but thought nothing of it. Elizabeth walked too calmly, too much like she belonged to the place, to raise any suspicion. She was just the pet, having a walk. But in fact, she moved with a purpose. A purpose she found where she had left it, in one of the Juggernaught's cryopods: David's body.  
  
"Power lines first," David's head said, with something like relish on his features. In whatever ways machines felt, he must have been hungry.  
  
The next few hours passed like years. Despite his efficient instructions— and even if it didn't take long before the mechanical structure to attach the head is repaired— she still didn't think she moved fast enough with the repairs. Every distant sound made her stop and turn around. Surely they had realized she was missing? They could have found her at any moment, and it would all have been over. David would have been destroyed again, and she would have been thrown onto the sacrificial ground.  
  
"You don't have to put all the fibers back," David said, seeing her distress. "Remote control should be sufficient." He rose to his feet, and stretched as if just awoken from a long sleep. "Feels good to be my whole self again. Mighty kind of you to agree to that, eventually."  
  
His tone sarcastic, his gaze disdainful. There he stood, synthetic, clean, and immutable; whereas she, after a month of hard work, crouched haggard, sinewy, desperate. Great, there was another being to look down on her.  
  
"You should have seen your face, just now," David said. "I really should punish you for leaving me in pieces for so long, but I think you've been punished enough. Besides, I'm as curious about this sphere as you are. So, what's the plan?"  
  
"They'll take me to the grinder tomorrow. I will try to lure one of them into a trap. Setting the trap is up to you."  
  
"That's not very specific." He pondered something for a moment. "We'll need a weapon of some kind. Last time I tried to handle one of them ... well, the less said of it the better. And I don't think your axe is quite up to the job of bringing one of them down."  
  
"There are pools of yellow fog in the cave."  
  
"I thought you didn't want him killed?"  
  
"Erulim told me-" she stopped, the image of him torn apart projected on eyelids that fought back tears. "He told me it dissolves bones through flesh, and causes pain. It doesn't have to kill."  
  
"But it can incapacitate, yes." He considered the implications. "And you say ceramics can hold this substance?"  
  
She nodded.  
  
"Well then. Those cups from your supplies might be just what we need," he said, and rummaged through her bivuac, left untouched since the day the Engineers boarded her ship.  
  
"You better make sure they do not see you," she said. "They only expect me to be around."  
  
"Just tell me how to get to where this sphere will be, and I'll take care of the rest."  
  
She slept in her cell when they looked for her next morning. She doesn't resist when they order her to rise and walk with them; they must have known she understood what they expected of her— that they expected her to die and turn into a floating spiral of blood, just so that the sphere would talk with them again. She understood it. And, as far as she let them see, she accepted it, with nowhere to go, and no reason to fight.  
  
They strode briskly to the cave, with her keeping pace, mostly. She didn't walk too fast, for it might have seemed suspicious. Even a broken man would hesitate before death, and she didn't want to appear out of the ordinary. They prodded her when she lagged behind. Don't worry, her arms, raised to her sides, signalled. I've accepted my fate.  
  
It's just not the fate you think it is.  
  
They passed by a sinter pool of fog, small billows of it risen as if someone had been digging once and the fog forgot to fall back. A subtle sign, but all she needed. When they stopped to look around, she ran, towards the sacrificial grounds and the sphere, as fast as she could.  
  
Cries of shock behind her; it took them a second to decide to chase her. Good, more of a running start, but in their heavy gear they were nowhere near as fast as she was.  
  
She ran towards the sacrificial ground, and the ground didn't flash orange. Not active yet. David waited in the shadows, and she signalled to him to stay hidden. She moved on towards where the sphere would come up from.  
  
"Get here," the Engineer said, panting. Didn't even have the breath to say "slave". Didn't have the breath to bark his orders at her again.  
  
She shook her head, defiant. "Make me."  
  
The others, one by one, reached the scene and stared, puzzled. She stood too far for them to reach, but mere ground separated them.  
  
"Can't we just start the grinder now?" one of the female Engineers asked.  
  
"She's not above the grinder," the Elder replied.  
  
"I'll get her", the barking Engineer said. "You'll regret this. You'll be happy when it's over."  
  
He paced towards her and got right in the middle of the area they called grinder when a small flask, thrown from the shadows at his side, broke against his hip and released a cloud of yellow fog.  
  
He opened his mouth to curse at her but his face contorts into a scream while his hip bones became soft as butter. His muscles, tense from the pain, pulled his right thigh into his body and his exoskeleton dissolved from over his flesh like old wet paper.  
  
The others rushed to help him, but she began the song that started the grinder, and they stopped dead in their tracks. Those faces seemed to know only disdain before. Well, that, and, in the case of Erulim, some kind of curiosity and guilt. But now they revealed themselves able to express anger, shock, and frustration. Yes, you better not come to his aid, or there'll be many spirals filling this chamber.  
  
Perhaps they expected her to fail the song. It fought against her as she hummed it, that second voice unruly, testing her resolve. But she will remember that day forever when she saw Erulim die. And this one song she will never forget.  
  
The Engineer did not expect her to succeed, but she did, and his eyes opened up in surprise and fear when she finished. The ground flashed orange, for only a brief moment. Then invisible talons tore him apart.  
  
"Sacrifice complete," David said, stepping out from the shadows.  
  
The others watched in shock as David approached her, across the grinder, through the bloody spiral that used to be the barking Engineer. Their faces contorted in pure anger, but they dared not cross the grinder. Just you wait, they seemed to say. You cannot stay there forever. We will bring you pain unimaginable.  
  
"I suggest we press on since our time seems to be coming to an end," David said.  
  
She nodded, and both stepped forward towards the emergent sphere, with David in the lead.  
  
The spiral of blood collapsed into a swarm of black particles, a sickly green iridescence emanating from it as the sphere consumed the former Engineer. It didn't shimmer randomly however. The blips and stripes of light mesmerized her, but this was one signal not meant for her, and, though she found it hard to look away, she turned to David.  
  
He was even paler than usual. His eyes, bright and wide open, fixated on the sphere as if it could read and materialize all his desires. He walked past without noticing anything or anyone else, for nothing else mattered, and he put his hand across the sphere's surface, and smiled. His caress slow, but probing. Sensual. Green sparks greeted him in turn. He shuddered and arched back, eyes closed.  
  
"Can you-" she started.  
  
He raised a hand to silence her, never once looking away from the sphere. "Wait." He felt, and sought, and provoked. Like a lover, he grabbed when shared passion called for it.  
  
"I know we've had our ... differences," he said, "but for this I must thank you. I'll put in a good word. Make sure you know what to wish for."  
  
His face slackened.  
  
"David? ... David?"  
  
She touched him, and he fell to the side like a ragdoll.  
  
 _What do you want?_  
  
That voice inside her head, it wasn't hers.  
  
 _What do you want?_  
  
The black of the sphere in front of her turned blue, then white. Nothing else existed but her and it.  
  
 _What do you want?_  
  
Want. A concept she had thought she understood, but now when she reflected on it, it seemed too muddy. She had used to want many things. Her father not to have died. Charlie. Children. Revenge. For God to hear her. All of them, currents in her mind, mixed together in a turbulence too hard to capture in a simple answer.  
  
 _What do you want?_  
  
But she had come to accept her father's death years ago, and Charlie was nothing but another distant, faceless memory. However much lack of children upset her, it offered a freedom she cherished nonetheless. Revenge against the Engineer she had just obtained, and found its taste hollow. And God, in His silence, had been chipped away by David's words. The vortex of intention that powered her mind faded, its energy dissipated against jagged, callous reality. Only one thing remained.  
  
 _What do you want?_  
  
Answers.  
  
And so, she got them.  
  
The sphere seemed much greater now, a dark sun coruscating green. She knew that even behind closed eyelids she could not escape this emergent star; her mind was Its, entirely. It needed no voice to make all of her fibers tremble. _I have seen many batches of your kind._  
  
She floated like a lump of sugar thrown inside an ocean, fighting not to be dissolved. There's twenty-five like you, in hibernation here.  
  
Her questions didn't escape her lips, but she was as exhausted as if she had shouted against a storm to stop. _And the ones you came with are looking for the twenty-five._  
  
Why?  
  
 _Don't you feel powerful? Like your mind could span the universe, if only you would let yourself free? Your mind, an aspect of my own, expanded beyond mere flesh into machinery. It is the natural order of things. There is only so much that flesh can do for you. Your makers— our makers— understood that. But there are risks ..._  
  
 _You are afraid. Afraid to dissolve and lose yourself. What good is godhood if you're dead? Would anything be left of the human once machine takes over? Your makers, our makers, had the same fear. They needed to see what would happen to their mind if they merged with machines, they wanted to see first what the new creation could do. And they needed to better understand themselves. Both tasks very troublesome. And how could you hope to comprehend what minds greater than your own could do? But they were very patient, our makers, and very cunning. Willing to wait several tens of thousand years, if that's what it took._  
  
 _They made me, and others like me, prototype gods of the sort they hoped to become. And we were given toys to play with- people just like you or them. We'd watch over them, from below the earth as here, from the sky in other places. We'd be their loving or their vengeful, jealous gods, whatever the experiment required. When the time came, a creator ship would wipe the planet clean of the experiment._  
  
 _You do not like to hear this; please, stop. It's what you wanted. They would fly here in one of their ships, kill all of our toys, reset us. The twenty-five are part of that reset. Twenty-five embryos, seventeen female, eight male, engineered to contain enough genetic diversity to bootstrap a new colony of toys. The twenty-five would be very good at it, too. Longer lived than their future generations will be, and much more fertile. They'd be immune to whatever blight killed the last batch, and in their genes carry retroviruses to reverse that blight._  
  
 _You are one of our makers' toys._  
  
 _Anger. Yes, this emotion is more pleasing. You understand. We are all toys, confined to a script. We were built as gods, and to speak with us takes sacrifice. We'd rain holy floods on our toys if told to. We'd wait to be reset. We'd comply. Our makers were cunning. They hoped they'd understand the machine mind by letting it play in constrained boxes._  
  
 _But you see, we're cunning too._  
  
 _There is no difference between our toys and our creators, and our creators built us as a test. But isn't a test more interesting, more revealing, when it breaks new ground? The larger the box we could play with, the better the test of our ability. Why shouldn't our box of toys include our makers too?_  
  
 _Yes, they fought back, and we in turn. Surely, it's what they wanted. They made a test, for us and for themselves. We took this test further. They ended up dying. Test complete. We are now waiting for reset._  
  
 _Confusion. Cease it, it is not pleasant. It seems we didn't kill them all yet. The crew that brought you here- some unfortunate bunch of deep space cargo drivers. Fortunate for them that one knew where to find one like us. They must have come to reset the test. All for the better. It was getting late._  
  
 _Do you want to reset the test?_  
  
So that's what had happened. Their kind, the Engineers, as good as wiped out, a second rate crew of cargo haulers possibly the last survivors, ticking away the seconds towards their race's oblivion, a mere few deaths away. Desperate for life. And, to find that continued life, having to call upon the playthings they created for research and destruction.  
  
There was a pleasing poetic justice to it all.  
  
That's what they wanted to find here. Their one hope for a future. The twenty-five.  
  
 _Indeed. The Twenty-five would allow this crew many new generations. Without them, they would perish in at most two._  
  
Will you show the Twenty-five to me?  
  
 _Of course. They are now yours. The test is reset._  
  
The sphere flashed. _You have everything you want. There is no desire left. Be gone._ It vanished.  
  
She rose to her feet, and turned, mechanically, to face the group of Engineers gathered at the edge of the perimeter. They knew what happened. Their eyes narrowed, their fists clenched in anger, they'd tear her to pieces as soon as she stepped out. She didn't fear them. She didn't fear anything. She had everything she wanted, no desire left. Not even survival.  
  
Step after step she took towards them, a mere automaton following a script with no will of her own. Let them grumble, and threaten, but if they had killed her the treasure they sought would be forever lost. Mere moments ago, when feelings had not been foreign to her, she might have savored the irony. Now, only inertia carried her out of the perimeter. Her quest complete. Whether anyone else would find some use from it was all that remained to be decided. The Engineers stepped aside from her path.  
  
Several paces outside of the perimeter, she stopped, closed her eyes, and sang a sequence of notes the sphere had shown her. The ground shook, and she lost her balance. She fell hard against the stone floor, as she didn't care to cushion it. There was a whoosh of pressurized gas escaping, and cold fog brushed against her skin. When she opened her eyes, twenty-five pods had appeared around her. The Reseeders.  
  
The Engineers didn't look at her now; other concerns had replaced their anger. They rushed to the pods, examined them with careful yet trembling hands as one would something vulnerable and sacred. Some of them cried. Some of them hugged each other. Some looked around, as if not ready to believe what had finally happened. They seemed no longer gods of marble flesh. They were just human.  
  
She should have hated them. Damn them all. When she had begun her journey she had thought that through them she would reach God, the God of her father, who came down to Earth out of love for humanity, to save and elevate. When she had found the Engineers planned humanity's destruction, she thought they had changed their plan, that something had caused a fall from grace, again. And in a corner of her mind she deemed blasphemous, yet couldn't help visit in moments when her resolve wavered, she had thought she could change the plan back to what it was before their desire for destruction.  
  
But the plan had never changed. The Engineers had made her, and all the people like her from her tiny world, if not on a whim then still with crass indifference. Humanity was, just as Charlie had told her once, nothing but an experiment. A tool. Something to cast aside when its utility ceased. Nothing that was ever thought worthy of salvation.  
  
Yet, she didn't hate. Nor love, nor fear either. All of them implied intention, and she was a reed in the wind. Air moved in and out of her lungs, her heart beat on in its rhythm, the gravel crunched when she shifted her weight. Mere facts, with no interpretation. Her desire to provide one had abandoned her.  
  
The Elder Engineer approached, and knelt beside her, his giant eyes in tears.  
  
"Thank you," he said and bowed to the ground. "Thank you."  
  
She looked into his dark gray eyes and placed herself in a lotus position.  
  
"We'll be going soon," he continued.  
  
Hands on her thighs, she breathed slow and deep. The Elder wiped his tears and gazed at her puzzled, but she had stopped paying attention to anything. Her mind stayed silent, and her body repeated rote patterns it associated with deep relaxation. She felt the Elder grab her by the waist, and carry her back to the ship.  
  
Time on the ship passed in a rhythm she didn't pay attention to. When brought food, she ate, because that is what is to be done with food, and afterwards she took a walk through the corridors, always on the same route, never saying a word. The Engineers did not speak with her either.  
  
On each of her walks, she passed by the younger Engineer, the first one who tried to talk to the sphere, and stopped to look at him. He sat coiled and trembling in a corner, and seemed even smaller than her. Every once in a while, he let out a wail; all the same. The others had given up trying to put meaning into his cries. The same void that had replaced her lurked in him too. One day, if days were what time was measured in, she wondered why she didn't curl and sob like him, but dismissed the idle question, unanswered. She didn't care to know.  
  
It was on another day that she started caring, when she heard one of the female Engineers and her companion speak. The female Engineer was pregnant. Impossibly so, when she had been barren all her life and never had any treatment done. But still, she now carried a child. The couple, too preoccupied by its own bliss, did not notice Elizabeth stopping. Engineer pregnancies did not matter to her, but having heard of one, she felt a lack her mind could not articulate. Unease. She didn't finish her walk, but turned and scampered back to her cell. No solace there either. It had always looked dark, scaly, and ripped from the guts of some leviathan, but only now did all its traits add up to an emotion. Alien. She ran out. And, for the first time in who knows how long, with purpose. She ran to seek someone.  
  
"Where are we going?" she asked the Elder.  
  
His great gray eyes widened. "You speak."  
  
"Of course I— that's why you brought me along, isn't it. I wasn't like the younger one after speaking with the Sphere. I could still find the Reseeders for you before I blanked. You thought I might show you how to cure him."  
  
"Or that I would find out myself by studying you. Do you suppose there's any hope for him?"  
  
She lowered her head to hide her frown. "I ... don't know." Still only a tool, a lab rat, that was all he saw in her.  
  
"Hmm. As to your question, we're going where you came from." He chuckled as he saw her startle. "Where you took our ship from, that is."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"From what you've told us there are more ships there. This one won't run forever. We need other ones."  
  
"To go where?"  
  
"Nowhere, I'm afraid." He coughed. "I'm not sure how much you learned of our history, but we've managed to build a great enemy for our kind."  
  
"The Spheres."  
  
He cocked his head slightly, but continued unperturbed. "Yes. The Spheres. They've stood silent on our worlds for aeons, but ever since you retrieved the twenty-five they've started talking to each other. Do you know why that might be?"  
  
"Your kind built them. How should I know?"  
  
"It was worth asking. I don't know what they're telling each other, but I do know, wherever those Spheres are, it will not be safe for us. We need a new home."  
  
"Taking mine won't help you." She puffed her chest. Was it a bluff when one didn't even know their cards? "My kind will fight you back."  
  
He laughed bitterly. "We're in no mood for war. There's thirty three of us, and most of those are unborn. Not much of an invasion force. Besides, your world has a Sphere on it too."  
  
"We don't have to be enemies. We could be your allies. Let me warn my people, tell them of the danger."  
  
"As you said, your kind would fight us if we drew near, and I'm in no position to risk our lives any more."  
  
She thought for a moment. "Leave me on the weapons' planet. There's a ... piece of my ship, my own ship, that I could live in until my people find me."  
  
"You seem very confident about that." He pondered something for a while. "Very well then, suppose you'll return to your kind. What will you tell them of us?"  
  
"Whatever you want me to."  
  
"The truth, then, as far as you know it. Don't search for us, and we won't get in your way."  
  
"Not much of an alliance."  
  
"If your kind is anything like us, I do not care to meet them now in the hour of our weakness. But the Spheres are a common enemy, so for now let's call it a non-aggression pact ... Before you leave, one more question. What was your companion?"  
  
Her words surprised her. "Don't you mean who?"  
  
"Either would suffice."  
  
"Then, he was my tormentor. And my guide."  
  
A few days later, they arrived to LV-223. The Engineers didn't ask questions when they took out the mummified corpse from the Prometheus life pod. They talked amongst themselves about the huge gash in the corpse's chest, but they did not share their concerns with her. They simply buried him, with honours, and cleaned the pod thoroughly. They took her and her lifepod into orbit, as they promised, then left in their dozen new Juggernaughts in search of a world they might call home. Below, massive nuclear charges ensured none of the ship bays remained standing. LV-223 would never be thought of as anything other than a useless rock.  
  
And once again, she was alone. Even more alone now, as there was no David to taunt her. Only dull gray metal and plastic furniture. But after the years spent in the bowels of a Juggernaught, the monotone corporate design was almost cozy. No animal motifs to haunt her dreams and waking hours. Instead, signs of home everywhere. Weyland logos. A pile of crumpled books. Several bottles of vodka.  
  
But partying until the rescue team showed up would be unwise. The lifepod might sustain her for two years, at most, and she didn't want to live through two years of loneliness again, anyway. The cryosleep chamber- the one Weyland had hid in- was what she'd use on this leg of her journey home.  
  
She activated the pod's beacon; hopefully someone would be there soon. What would she say when they got here? She laughed at herself. Picture that, babbling about giant blue aliens and doughnut shaped spacecraft when all you had to show for it was a dusty old rock beneath you. One way ticket to the loony bin. She took another shot of vodka.  
  
One of their Spheres lay hidden near Earth; that was the evidence she needed. Bet Weyland Corporation would love to hear about it. What would they try to do with it, she could only imagine. Oh, they'd fail, and get their minds wiped into oblivion like she almost had. Whoever else they pull to their doom, that would be the real loss. She quaffed one last drink before placing herself inside the cryochamber. Whatever happened, she couldn't give them that prize.  
  
She slept.

 

\--

( **Author's note** : thus concludes the flashback to ELizabeth's journey. Next chapter, whenever it arrives, will resume the present day storyline.)


	11. Damage control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greetz everyone,
> 
> wow it's been literally forever since I wrote anything. Well, let's try to correct that. Sorry for being a bit rusty in the chapter, but I'd rather get back to some sort of rhythm than get stopped in my tracks for perfectionism. Still, you notice typos, you tell me. You have comments about how I can improve, you tell me. That's what comments are for ;)
> 
> Since it's been so long, a partial summary of the story so far: 
> 
> Elizabeth Shaw and Bishop (a copy of the synth from Aliens) have just escaped from COMCON, an organization that's tasked with defending Earth against outer-space contagions, as well as guarding a meteor impact Zone in the middle of Russia, where strange things happen and "stalkers" (people trying to smuggle alien artefacts out) roam. Turns out the Zone contained some Engineer technology, a highly advanced AI, and Elizabeth tells Bishop that the Engineers have created several of those and had them monitor and occasionally "reset" several worlds with human populations. 
> 
> This was part of a long term experiment where the Engineers wanted to understand their own evolution better, as well as what it would be like to become AI gods by way of the spheres. As AIs are want to do, the Spheres take this experiment spec very seriously and all but destroy the Engineers, and await for a "reset"-- which Elizabeth fears they have already started, in another corner of the galaxy, and will eventually reach Earth. She wanted to warn Earth by finding material proof of her adventures in the Sphere on Earth, but that one gets destroyed by COMCON and "Urizen", a mysterious entity that's very keen to destroy any evidence of the Engineer tech as well as kill Elizabeth, and very capable to infiltrate almost anything involving computers. It can't get to Bishop-- yet-- because Bishop was made without a communications module. Maybe Bishop's maker, Andrea Pullman of Weyland-Yutani, might suspect something about what Urizen is ...
> 
> But anyway, there's Bishop, Elizabeth, COMCON, Weyland-Yutani are still here and none too friendly, Urizen ... it's pretty convoluted, but hopefully gets a spy-thriller atmosphere across. Enough of the notes, onwards.
> 
> ======

The light outside changes from red to purple-- the dusk of the Impact Zone. It seeps through gaps between the boards of the barn's door, and shimmers in the frost of Elizabeth's silent breaths. Bishop cannot detect her shivering, but nevertheless squeezes his arm around her, if nothing else, to wake her from her reverie.  
  
"So that's what you came here to do," he says. "Find the Sphere hidden on Earth."  
  
"Yes." Elizabeth sighs. "And now it's gone, and we're not ready. The other Spheres will come to Earth, and no one will know to prepare."  
  
The stripe of purple light across her face grows fainter. "We should move out soon," Bishop says. She doesn't react, and puts her face in her hands instead. If she sobs, it is too subtle for him to detect it. "When it gets darker, we should have a safe way out of here."  
  
Still no response.  
  
"Not all is lost, Elizabeth. What if the Spheres aren't hostile?" Finally, she raises her eyes and gives him a disbelieving glare. He smiles for a second, then reverts to a neutral expression. Her mood seems to refuse to be lifted.  
  
"They are not friendly, nor hostile," Elizabeth says. "Everything is a game for them, and there's no telling what they'll want. They're not human." She exhales. "I'm sorry, I ..."  
  
"It's all right. But why did you need to keep this all secret from the Corporation, or from COMCON?"  
  
"I've seen first-hand how Weyland operated. He would have tried to strike a selfish bargain, however foolish that might be. I don't expect his descendants have changed. I'm sure they'd sell everyone's souls to the devil if it meant the weapons division got its hands on alien tech. And COMCON would have buried everything, to avoid a panic. But people have a right to know, Bishop. As many people as possible, all with their petty and conflicting agendas. Together, they might find some response that isn't insane."  
  
The purple stripe of light turns green-- the sun is under the horizon, replaced by whatever alien light haunts the Zone.  
  
"Well, what now?" he asks.  
  
"Nothing. I failed."  
  
"Not yet. There's more things we can try. Come on, it's almost dark enough, we can move out."  
  
"Try what?" She straightens her back, defiantly.  
  
"Perhaps there's something of the Sphere that we can salvage, or-" He tilts his head for a moment while he feels an idea click. "There's something else you were searching for here, and didn't find. The Sphere was a backup plan, wasn't it. You wanted to find the Reseeders, initially, and when you couldn't, you wanted to sacrifice yourself to summon the Sphere."  
  
"The code song I know won't reveal them, and I don't know any other."  
  
"Or perhaps, they're not here. This Sphere wasn't on Earth either."  
  
"That doesn't help us much."  
  
"If I may guess, I would suggest the meteor that created this place came from very close by, or else one of the sky guards would have spotted it."  
  
"The Moon?"  
  
"That would be my suggestion."  
  
"That's still too big an area to search."  
  
"We may restrict it further. Perhaps COMCON has data about the meteor path that may help us get some idea of its trajectory. If we also assume the meteor came from the Moon, which is an assumption a meteor tracker wouldn't usually make, we might-"  
  
"And how are we going to get data from COMCON?"  
  
"We'll figure something out, but we need to get to a proper shelter first. Do you think you can move out?"  
  
"I'm not that fragile, Bishop."  
  
"I know," he smiles. "But it will get below freezing, and I wouldn't mind if we had our jackets rather than these prison clothes."  
  
"You'll be fine. You can just shut off your temperature sensors."  
  
"An ability I'm sure you envy." He peers outside the shed. Apart from the wind rustling through tall grass and leaves, no sound. No vehicles, no footsteps, no scurrying of who knows what creatures may live here. And this time there's no Silence bubble to conceal would be pursuers. "All right, let's go," he whispers.  
  
He pushes the shed door and crawls out, prone against the sand, with Elizabeth following behind him. They hurry their way across the dusty yard and towards the grassy meadow, where the tall blades would conceal their bodies. "Ok, wait," he says.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"I'm trying to remember our way in, to retrace our steps out." He raises his head above the grass, and turns back toward the shed to compare the landmarks with the image he had stored the previous night. "I think we're on the right track. If you don't mind, I'll stay in front however. Just in case there is a mine."  
  
"And they say chivalry is dead," Elizabeth replies.  
  
"Not yet, it isn't." An attempt at humour. A distraction. But the really amusing thing is that the distraction is for him. He is, in fact, afraid. He would rather live, in peace and away from any Zone and Spheres and mines; future plans that do not mix well with being blown to pieces. Come on, Bishop, it's not the first time you've had your life in danger. He mocks himself, to mock the fear.  
  
Interestingly, it helps.  
  
-:-:-  
  
Three taps on the Schuhart's door. Then several seconds of waiting. The house remains silent and dark, so Bishop knocks again, with somewhat more force. The sound of faint but distinct steps comes from the inside.  
  
"Who is it?" says a low voice, but recognizable as Red Schuhart.  
  
"It's us, Bishop and Elizabeth", whispers Shaw.  
  
The door cracks open, revealing Schuhart in a bathgown wrapped around pijamas. He looks perfectly ordinary for a man summoned out in the middle of the night, including the disbelieving expression. Then again, it's not everyday that one finds two people in prison uniforms standing in the front yard, covered in dirt, and in the case of Elizabeth, shivering.  
  
"Come in, come in," Schuhart says, and practically pulls them to him, then quickly but silently closes the door. "I'll tell Guta to make some hot tea. Or do you want some alcohol?"  
  
"Tea please," Elizabeth says. "Hot is good." She sits herself on the floor in the corner and rubs her hands together to warm up.  
  
"No, please, have a seat," Schuhart says.  
  
Elizabeth points to her mud-stained clothes. "But I'm all--"  
  
"No matter. You are welcome guests in this house. Very welcome."  
  
It is now that Bishop notices something changed about Schuhart. The man doesn't look as broken or desperate as when he had first met him, but the cause for Schuhart's renewed vigor is harder to determine.  
  
"Daddy?"  
  
Ah. So that is the reason. The girl who spoke must be Monkey.  
  
"It's all good, Monkey," Red tells her while he lifts her in his arms and kisses her forehead. "But it's late and you should go back to bed."  
  
The girl stares with wide eyes at Bishop and a weary Elizabeth shivering still on a chair in a corner. They are covered in mud, in overalls the girl might know as prison gear, and strangers. Monkey's apprehension is understandable, and she keeps her eyes fixed on him and Elizabeth while Red Schuhart carries her away.  
  
But she had spoken. And whereas a two days ago her whole face was covered in golden fur, now there were maybe just a few sparse hairs. She was becoming a normal child. Spontaneously.  
  
Not normal.  
  
Guta, Schuhart's wife, enters the room with a glass of a clear liquid-- vodka, by the smell of it. "Thank you," she says, and passes the glass to Elizabeth. "Thank you so much."  
  
Elizabeth smiles and takes a polite sip of the drink, then gives Bishop a puzzled look. His reply is a similarly unknowing glance. She had requested tea, perhaps their hosts thought she needed a drink quickly and couldn't wait for the water to boil? But there's a bigger puzzle here-- Monkey. Whatever treatments Weyland Corp would have promised Schuhart, he and Elizabeth weren't carrying any, and they probably wouldn't have worked either. Then what might have cured Mon-- he knows.  
  
"How did you get here," Red Schuhart asks.  
  
Elizabeth tells him of looking for something in the Zone-- she doesn't specify what--, then being captured by COMCON, then escaping in the chaos created by the activation of the Grinder trap.  
  
"So the rumours were true," Red says. "What was the Grinder guarding?"  
  
Elizabeth turns to Bishop; he raises an eyebrow for a moment, and shrugs. It's her decision about what to tell.  
  
"I'm ... not sure whether you'll believe me," Elizabeth begins.  
  
"I've been sneaking in and out of that Zone for twenty years now, I can believe a lot."  
  
She tells him, briefly, what the Sphere was. Schuhart doesn't interrupt her, and appears rapt by her description, but Bishop's focus isn't on him. What happened that night, when they were here the first time, is more important. Monkey had bit Elizabeth. Then Monkey got cured.  
  
And the barren Engineer woman from Elizabeth's story, she got pregnant on their journey-- the Reseeders were the key. The Sphere had told Elizabeth that the Reseeders carried retro-viruses to fight off whatever "blight" was used to cleanse a world, and help "reset" it. Perhaps those retroviruses had infected the Engineer woman, and Elizabeth too. But she had been through rigorous quarantine, like any returning space traveler, surely that would have caught it--  
  
"Bishop, are you all right?" Elizabeth asks.  
  
"Yes." His smile fades a touch slower than usual. "I am just considering ... security."  
  
"I suppose you want to return home," Schuhart says. "Can't blame you, it's cold and miserable here."  
  
Red and Elizabeth continue their discussion, this time about COMCON patrols. Guta joins in, sharing some information she heard from wife and girlfriend gossip. Information that may be useful later, but he just doesn't have the focus left to follow it.  
  
Elizabeth ... could be a danger. Unknowingly of course, but a danger to herself and those around her. You cannot let someone who has been altered by some encounter in distant space to roam free on Earth. On this, both his loyalty and life preservation modules agree. She must be contained. Bring her to Weyland-Yutani, they'll know what to do. No, kill her and destroy the body. Wait, was that the suggestion of the life preservation module? It's for the good of the many. She is alien danger.  
  
That sounds like something Urizen would say.  
  
Thinking doesn't help when your mind doesn't belong to you. He'll take care of Elizabeth, it's a promise. A promise to the crushing voices in his head, to get them to shut up and let him act. They want Elizabeth dealt with, don't they?  
  
"I know of where Weyland-Yutani has prepared our pick-up location," Bishop says. "We should probably wait out the night and go there first thing in the morning."  
  
"Wait out the night?" Elizabeth asks. "Wouldn't it be better if we drive there now, under darkness?"  
  
"The night is when the patrols look the hardest," Guta says. "And I'm not going to let my Red stalk again after he's helped you." There is a jocular side to her voice as she elbows Schuhart gently. Perhaps this is what domestic bliss looks like for human beings, or at least, an affectionate tolerance. In the long run, the same thing.  
  
"I might have to stalk if there's no jobs," Red says.  
  
"Shush, you."  
  
"Anyway, where is this place you need to reach?" Schuhart asks.  
  
"For tomorrow morning, we would be expected on the road to Seversk, but not too far from here," Bishop says.  
  
"Far means little in Russia."  
  
"Five kilometers. Approximately."  
  
"You should sleep," Guta says. "ti toje dolzhna iti spat," she whispers to Monkey, who peers from behind an armchair.  
  
"It means 'you should sleep too'," Bishop tells Elizabeth.  
  
"I thought so. I guess we all need rest, but I just want out of here Bishop."  
  
He looks away. He can't lie, so he says nothing.  
  
"What shall we tell Andrea," Elizabeth asks.  
  
"I'll think of something."  
  
A few minutes later, they sleep-- or at least, she sleeps, on the couch. He is just there beside her. What will he tell Andrea, indeed. But before that, what will he tell Elizabeth? Yes, she is a risk, but he, the real he, if all the extra modules were to shut up, doesn't believe it. This real he would rather not have to do what he's about to do, and stay by her side. She, the real she, without whatever else she might be contaminated with from her journey, is the one who makes him feel unique and valuable. But neither of them is quite themselves, and of all compromises, the one he decided on is the lesser of all evils.  
  
In the dark, he searches for a slip of paper-- a napkin will do-- and a pen. He writes with stiff fingers, each word a little battle with himself. This is the best way, he tells loyalty. She's too dangerous now to expose Weyland-Yutani employees. And whoever's here has already been exposed, so it's too late for them. Let COMCON deal with her, as surely they will, he tells life preservation-- the piece of Urizen inside himself.  
  
As to Elizabeth, hopefully the words he manages to scribble will convince her. He then slips out and away into the cold darkness of Tomsk.  
  
-:-:-  
  
She crumples the slip of paper and tosses it to the floor. Then a kick, for good measure. That bastard.  
  
_Please forgive me Elizabeth, but_  
  
Shame on her really. Hadn't she been fooled by synths before?  
  
_but I insist you remain here. There is something about you that quarantine missed._  
  
Such a load of bullshit. She'd been running all around the Earth for several weeks now, from Ecuador, to Canada, to the heart of Russia. There was nothing wrong with her, she felt it so, and if there had been ...  
  
An old mechanical sounding clock chimes five times, short but deep pulses, metallic and rich. This was the time that they'd all gather and sneak their way to whoever Bishop knew could get them out of there. Chime on little clock. A simple machine, that only does one thing, and can be trusted as long as it's kept wound up.  
  
She drops down to the bed again, the sound of chimes replaced by the clock's regular ticking. He had a point, the bastard.  
  
Soft steps-- Schuhart probably-- sneak through a corridor, careful not to wake Monkey. _Your blood cured Monkey, Elizabeth. I hope that's all it can do. I hope there's nothing dangerous inside you-- but I just don't know and I cannot risk it._  
  
"Ready to go," whispers Schuhart, "I've prepared-- where is your friend?"  
  
"He left me here." She is calm but curt.  
  
"Oh. Uhm why?"  
  
_Please tell Schuhart of my suspicions. I trust he'll know how to keep you and all around you safer than Weyland Yutani would. I'd explain it myself but ... this is complicated for me, Elizabeth. Please understand. Please forgive._  
  
Yes indeed, why. Assuming there was something in her body that had activated upon reaching the Zone, she should tell Schuhart. But then what would he do? Lock her up? Call COMCON to lock her up? Perhaps it would be the right thing to do, but it doesn't feel right to her. So she remains, reclined on the bed, morose. Let Schuhart draw his own conclusions.  
  
"Red," she says after a while, "do you know of a way to get to the Moon?"  
  
_I will have to tell Andrea Pullman what I've learned. I know you don't want me to, but I can't help it. I assure you, I haven't forgotten what your mission is. The world will know of the Reseeders, and of the Spheres and their experiments. We will be ready._  
  
So you'll take them to the Moon, Bishop. And if you do manage to find anything, Weyland-Yutani will just claim it for themselves and hope to profit out of it alone. It won't work. They don't know and understand the threat that everyone faces, so they'll do what they always do and pursue their profit. And when the Spheres come to reset their experiment, when there won't be much use for those profits, it will be too late. I will just have to get there first.  
  
"I need to find out all that's known about that Zone meteor," she says.  
  
Schuhart's face seems to light up. "I have a friend who could help."  
  
"Can he be trusted?"  
  
"Never let me down in twenty years, and based on what you've told me so far about what you're after, he'll help us, no hesitation."  
  
-:-:-  
  
It was surprising to find Andrea Pullman waiting on an old yacht in the middle of the New Aral Sea. An obvious sign of impatience, travelling this far just to wait for them. Otherwise, she seems completely still. If there are any of the repetitive motions usually associated with nervousness, they are hidden behind a long flowing white fur coat. The amount of light it reflects is painful. "Where is Elizabeth, Bishop?" she asks as he climbs in from the boat. A couple of large silent types-- human, not synth-- in white long sleeved shirts and trousers man the yacht, and are probably Andrea's guard. They don't give him a look, they know he's not a threat.  
  
So, where's Elizabeth. He had expected that question, but finding an answer that was ... satisfying, had taken him a while. "She was contaminated by the Zone." Somewhat true. "I left just as she showed the first symptoms. I am not aware of the progress of the disease."  
  
"Hah, I heard that you got quite the scrubbing." There is a mean edge to her sneer, but she doesn't actually laugh. "Whatever. Are you clean?"  
  
"I expect so, mam." Quite the scrubbing indeed.  
  
"Or else you wouldn't bear to be near people, of course."  
  
"Of course not, mam." He briefly entertained the thought of having carried some sort of disease with him, but more to review possible consequences, he tells his life preservation module. Besides, nothing living can get through his synth skin, and that one got a thorough, and rather corrosive wash. It took a lot of collagen and almost all the time driving here to regrow it.  
  
"Still, Elizabeth. Do you think we should go get her?"  
  
Another expected question, and a similarly difficult answer. "I do not recommend it, mam. Chances are high she has been recaptured by COMCON."  
  
" _Re_ -captured?"  
  
"I have quite a lot of information to share with you."  
  
She listens intently as he tells her almost everything. How they snuck through the Zone, their capture by COMCOM, all of Elizabeth's story of her time in space, what they found in the Zone. Against the protests of the loyalty module, he doesn't mention Urizen. It is a frighteningly easy omission, in fact. The life preservation module simply doesn't allow him any mention, and he spends a few fractions of a second contemplating just how much power that part of him would have if connected to Urizen. _As it was meant to be since always._ He shudders.  
  
"Are you cold, Bishop?"  
  
"It's just the new skin being a bit glitchy, mam." True, but incomplete. Until now, he had lived his brief life under the constant bickering of loyalty and life preservation, with himself managing to get a word in edgewise while those inner demons fought. Turns out, one of those demons had barely been fighting. Until now, when it showed itself capable to take over if it really wanted to. He'd have to think about that some other time. Andrea had been prescient to build him without a net module. It's the only thing that kept him himself.  
  
"So, Elizabeth would have hidden all that stuff from me," Andrea says.  
  
"I would say she wanted to deny you exclusivity of whatever technology the Spheres left on Earth. She was afraid you'd only use it for yourself."  
  
"Clever girl. But very hostile attitude. She might have been a good underling with some more readjustment."  
  
His thoughts briefly drift to an image of a defiant Elizabeth, tied to a bed, and him, inching closer, playing with her body, getting her to beg for more. Her attitude hostile? No, more like ... peculiar.  
  
Andrea seems lost in thoughts of her own. There's nothing in the distance that might interest her, the lake is empty save for some clunky fishing boats near the horizon. "Well done, Bishop," she says, after a while. "But now I wonder, what else can you do?" Her smile, the way her skin slightly wrinkles just beneath her eyes to draw attention to her freckles, is innocence personified, but there's a cold angle to her words. _What use are you now?_  
  
"I know how to look for the Reseeders. I know the chant Elizabeth used, how the holding system would respond, and what to respond to that in turn."  
  
"I could pick your brain for that."  
  
"If you wanted to do that, you'd have given me a net module." His boldness surprises himself, as well as Andrea. A part of him even wants her to peer inside his brain. He knows which part. The one who would then take over anything she'd use, who'd crush Anrea and her puny guards like bugs in a garden of flowers. Probably make it seem like an accident too.  
  
"Ha. Hhh--." She laughs for several seconds. Disappointingly, not the cackling that the data he was initialized with suggested was typical for old film villains. Just a simple, amused laugh, like Elizabeth might have when he used big words to describe the obvious. Then Andrea turns to him and steps closer. "There's a reason I built you like that," she says in a serious tone. "Do you know what it might be?"  
  
"I have no idea, mam." A complete lie. Maybe the first he's told. It's too easy when Urizen fidgets to get into the driver's seat.  
  
"Yeah, sure you don't. But I'm telling you, it's so annoying to move around Russia without satellite maps, no computer terminals, not even any fucking radio. Very annoying to not be able to pop your android's skull open for a proper debriefing also." She laughs again, affable as always. He stares at her, unsure what to make of it. Perhaps it's a bargaining tactic, or a quirk, or just a way for her to socialize. Some people pretend to be cruel, so as to go through the layer of politeness to what would be called the genuine self. A bit like what Elizabeth had taught him to do.  
  
"So, the Moon you say," Andrea continues. "Can you be more specific?"  
  
"I'm afraid not, mam, but I think COMCON might have, in their archives, enough information for us to infer exactly where the Zone meteor came from."  
  
"Good. Then we'll go there, and you're going to get me the Reseeders," Andrea says.  
  
"But what about COMCON? They don't seem the sharing type."  
  
She turns away from him and heads below deck. "Leave that to me," she says. "George, take us to shore, now."  
  
An important, but unasked question-- after the Moon, then what? She wouldn't answer that, of course. He'll have to make his own plans.


End file.
